


Reflections in Black and Pink

by Krixwell



Category: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Genre: Adventure, Comedy, Gen, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2020-09-27 19:30:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 20,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20413105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krixwell/pseuds/Krixwell
Summary: Ever since the Ponyville clone massacre, one survivor who escaped capture has been living undercover in Manehattan. But when a changeling mistakes her for one of his kind and brings her back to Chrysalis, it marks the beginning of mayhem for everypony.Set in late season 6. Started for Camp NaNoWriMo, July 2019.





	1. Reflections of Home

There were many legends scattered around Equestria. Legendary beasts, legendary artifacts, legendary castles. Legendary ponies, legendary flowers, even legendary flight maneuvers. Equestria had enough legends for anypony, and most of them were true.

Many of the legends of Equestria were grandiose, having great repercussions whenever somepony decided to seek them out, or simply stumbled upon them by happenstance. Some were unassuming, hidden away, lying dormant, only to once in a while be used for trivial purposes, though they were legendary no less. Only a fool, however, believed that something small and unassuming could not also have great repercussions.

A butterfly flapped its wings in the Everfree Forest.

* * *

It was a very windy morning in Manehattan. Stuffy ponies in elaborate outfits had to hold on to their fancy hats as they pushed against the gusts to get to their respective destinations. Taxi ponies had trouble keeping their carts stable, and the passengers wore sour expressions as they were tossed around. They were sheltered from the wind themselves, but that didn't stop them from complaining.

Amongst all the grumpy Manehattanites, a pink earth pony bounced along happily. She was wearing a long coat that would hide her cutie mark when it wasn't being tossed about by bouncing and wind alike, and a Panamare hat in matching dark purple. Showing no concern for the wind, she wasn't even holding on to her hat, yet it stayed on her head as though glued to it.

Figuring out how to get the glue out of her mane was a problem for later.

She rounded the last corner and opened the door to the Glazed Miracles Bakery, and the wind followed her in. It was, she thought, the coziest bakery in Manehattan, and she loved working there. It was the closest she still had to a place she truly felt at home in. Between the bakery itself and the kind married couple who owned the place, it seemed as though the only thing missing was a foal or two to play with during her breaks. Unfortunately, the bakers' only son was all grown up and had traveled to Canterlot to become a royal guard.

She greeted them with a smile, as always. "Hi, Sweet Tooth! Hi, Bear Hug!"

"The door!" Sweet Tooth answered loudly, the red pegasus frantically flitting around to save the tablecloths. She was failing.

She looked back. Sure enough, she had left the door open, letting the wild winds into the bakery. "Oh, right." She closed the door, and the tablecloths fell into their places. Or would have if their places were all over the floor. "Sorry."

Sweet Tooth let out a relieved sound. "That's alright, Party Popper. How are you today?"

Party Popper, of course, hadn't always been her name. Everypony knew her real name, but it wasn't exactly hers anymore, and she didn't want anypony to know it had ever _been_ hers, so nowadays she went by Party Popper instead. She didn't really like the name, but that was another layer of safety. Nopony would expect Pinkie Pie to go by a name so close to "Party Pooper", least of all Pinkie Pie.

"Oh, I'm great, thank you!" she answered. "The breeze outside is so refreshing!"

"Well, as long as it stays outside, I suppose," Sweet Tooth mused. Now that she had calmed down, Party Popper thought she looked tired. It was quickly confirmed when Sweet Tooth turned to Bear Hug and asked, "Honey, do we have any more coffee?" The Glazed Miracles Bakery had never sold coffee, so it had to be for her.

It seemed to take her big, orange-coated earth pony husband a moment to realize Sweet Tooth was talking to him. Come to think of it, the jovial, talkative stallion had been wordlessly looking at Party Popper for some time now, and his smile looked… fake?

"...yes, dear," he said finally, "I think we have some in the back. Pi– 'Party Popper', could you come and take a look with me?"

"Uh, sure."

Party Popper followed Bear Hug into the storage room in the back of the bakery. She was surprised when he quietly indicated the trapdoor that led down to the basement.

"The basement?" she asked, "Why would we have coffee in the b–"

"Shh, let's just go!" He opened the trapdoor and waved for her to follow.

Party Popper was perplexed. A lot of ponies wanted her to shut up, but she had _never _been shushed by Bear Hug before! Still, she followed. As she entered the dark, dusty basement, Party Popper realized she could no longer hear Sweet Tooth's steps above. Had he brought her here to get out of earshot? The only possible explanation rose up in Party Popper's mind.

"I don't know what we're celebrating," she began, "but if you want to throw a surprise party for Sweet Tooth, I can–"

Abruptly, Bear Hug pushed her against a wall with a hoof over her mouth. Her eyes went wide in surprise. It was time to shut up again, apparently.

"Look, 'Party Popper'," he said in a much harder tone than she had ever heard from him, "or whatever your name is. What are you doing disguising yourself as _Pinkie Pie_? Everypony knows she's supposed to be in Canterlot right now, preparing for that new Festival of Love with the Princesses and all the other Element bearers. It's all over the newspapers! You'll get us all caught!"

The moment he lifted his hoof, Party Popper said, "Pinkie Pie? Who's that?" It was her go-to answer whenever somepony pointed out the resemblance between Party Popper and Pinkie despite her masterful disguise.

"Don't pretend to be an idiot, you know who she is. Now let's leave this horrible bakery so you can shapeshift into somepony else before somepony recognizes Pinkie Pie and starts asking questions!"

"But I can't shapeshift, silly! Not much, anyway."

"What? You mean you're stuck like that?" Bear Hug groaned. "Buzzing hay, you're going to have to go to the Queen and ask her for help, after we get you out of the city."

"The Queen? Equestria doesn't have a Queen."

"Oh. You really _are_ an idiot. That explains it." He sighed. "Come on, let's go!"

As Bear Hug pulled her hoof back towards the stairs, Party Popper finally noticed something shrouded in the darkness of the basement, just barely visible if you squinted - the silhouette of a large, unconscious stallion.

"I'm Mandible," Bear Hug hissed as he dragged her along back up through the trapdoor, "and since you seem to be too thick-headed to get it on your own: I'm a changeling too."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspirations: The opening involving legends and wind is very much inspired by the Wheel of Time series. Sweet Tooth and the real Bear Hug are somewhat based on Tom Dupain and Sabine Cheng from Miraculous Ladybug.
> 
> My goal for Camp NaNoWriMo is a somewhat arbitrary 20k words, but the story's needs come first, so if I finish the goal but the story isn't done yet, I'll probably continue. Vice versa, if the goal turns out too long for the story, I won't try to pad it out too much.


	2. Names

After Mandible excused himself to the baker's wife and started pulling the pink idiot along the windy Manehattan street, he couldn't help but curse under his breath. In his hurry to get out of there, he had made a mistake – if this 'Party Popper' didn't blow their cover with her atrocious choice of pony to shift into, he might have just done it himself by leaving the baker tied up down in that basement.

Standard protocol was to use a mind-numbing changeling spell just before releasing the victim, to make sure they would wake up remembering nothing about why they had been asleep in the first place. Now the baker could wake up at any time and tell his wife exactly what had happened – that somepony appearing to be her had brought him down there and used some kind of eye magic to put him to sleep.

Ever since the disastrous invasion of Canterlot a few years back, the general public of Equestria seemed more widely aware of changelings than they had been before, so they would very likely figure out what had happened soon enough. Too soon.

Which was another reason to get the buzz out of the city. He just hoped Frons would listen.

He was distracted from his thoughts by the sound of bouncing hooves next to him. Looking to his left, 'Party Popper' was jumping twice her height into the air for each pony length she moved forwards.

"_Stop that_," Mandible hissed. "Are you _trying_ to draw attention to us?"

"Stop what?" the infuriating mare asked, sounding like innocence incarnate.

Mandible checked to make sure nopony was within earshot. The howling winds helped, both drowning out their words and keeping would-be pedestrians indoors. "We're trying to get to the meeting point without anypony noticing you look like Pinkie Pie. That would be a buzz of a lot easier if you weren't acting in character in all the most visible ways."

"Meeting point?" she asked, still bouncing. "I thought you said we were leaving the city?"

"Oh, good, you have a little bit of a brain. Yeah, we are, as soon as we can, but first we have to meet up with the rest of my squad. I was just about to leave when you walked into the bakery, so we don't have too much time."

"Ohh. Okay!"

At least she was willing to go along with him. As infuriating as everything else about this situation was, he hadn't had any trouble on that front. Though thinking about that gave him an intense urge to find some wood to knock on.

"So what's your story, anyway?" Mandible asked. He wished he didn't need to know. "What are you doing in Manehattan? We were told we'd be the only changelings here."

"Oh, I'm just a friendly baker and party pony from Ponyville."

"_Out_ of character, 'Party Popper'!" he snapped. "Speaking of which, what's your real name? I don't want to keep calling you by that stupid pony name when we meet up with the squad."

She seemed to consider for a moment. "I thought you already knew, silly! My real name is Pinkie Pie! Or it used to be."

Mandible groaned. "Look, if you're not going to tell me your name, I'm just going to make one up for you. And trust me, you _really_ don't want me making up a name for you." He had no problem with making up good changeling names, but he wouldn't. Not for this idiot.

"Making up names is fun! If I ever have a daughter I'm naming her Raspberry Pie. My second daughter would be Blueberry Pie, because she'd _obviously_ be blue, and then my third daughter could be Cherry Pie, because cherries are deeeeelicious…"

Mandible grit his teeth and tried to tune her ramblings out as they walked.

He failed.

* * *

By the time they reached the alleyway that would serve as a meeting point for squad 833, Party Popper was naming her future great-grandchildren – all 152 of them, with increasingly irritating pony names – and Mandible had a splitting headache.

"About time the two of you showed up." The voice came from a cutesy pegasus filly, but Mandible knew better. Gena's impatient expression didn't match the youthful, innocent face.

"Mandible, Clypeus," the lanky unicorn stallion who had to be Frons greeted.

Labrum, disguised as an overweight earth pony stallion, didn't bother with greetings. "I have to say I didn't take either of you for the type to shift against gender without orders from the Queen."

"Actually, this isn't Clypeus," Mandible explained as he dropped his disguise. "Squad 833, meet Proboscis." At the curious look the pink changeling gave him, he added, "Told you I'd do it."

"Proboscis?" Frons asked, prompting an elaboration. He dropped his disguise, revealing his true form. He was slightly taller than Mandible, but otherwise they looked nearly identical. Most changelings did.

"You found a stray?" Gena asked, growing to twice her previous size as the filly disappeared in a flash of green. Labrum followed suit.

"But I'm not even a dog!" Proboscis protested.

"Dogs aren't the only…" Mandible began, but decided it wasn't worth it. He dropped the subject and turned to the others. "Anyway, she ran right into the bakery I had infiltrated, looking like buzzing _Pinkie Pie_ of all ponies. Says she's stuck like this. I brought her along so we can get her to the Queen before somepony notices there's a Pinkie Pie in both Canterlot and Manehattan."

Frons seemed to consider that. "That does seem like the best course of action."

Mandible fought not to breathe a sigh of relief. If he could get them to leave as soon as possible just because of Proboscis, he wouldn't have to tell Frons about the baker.

"Wait," Labrum said, putting Mandible right back on edge, "if neither of you are Clypeus, where _is_he?"

"Good question," Gena said.

"He should've been here by now," Frons said, looking more genuinely worried than Gena and Labrum put together, almost as though he cared about the members of his squad beyond the mission's success. It was sickening. "Does anypony know who Clypeus was going to impersonate, in case we need to stage a rescue mission?"

Great. A rescue mission was the last thing Mandible needed right now.

…or at least that was what he thought until he realized he could no longer hear the bouncing of pony hooves next to him. He turned around and saw a pink tail disappear around the corner.

_Oh no, you're not leaving us n--_

"HEY, EVERYPONY!!" came a shrill and unbelievably loud shout from the street.

Mandible took the first pegasus form that came to mind, and flew quickly to the corner. He had to look all over the street before he spotted her hanging upside-down from the top of a lamppost.

She was shouting at the top of her lungs: "HAS ANYPONY SEEN A CHANGELING NAMED, UH, CLIPPER BUS?! IF YOU SEE HIM, TELL HIM MY CHANGELING FRIENDS OVER HERE ARE LOOKING FOR HIM! THANK YOU!"

As the infernal pink one rode the lamppost down like a fire station pole, cheerily ignoring the panicking crowd and approaching street guards, Mandible covered his face with his hooves and groaned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspirations: The names for Party Popper's hypothetical children are borrowed from Daughter of Discord by DisneyFanatic2364.
> 
> If the show hadn't beaten me to using the name Ocellus, there could've been one in squad 833; her name fits their theme of insectoid facial features.


	3. Surfing Stormy Seas

Some days, nothing went as expected. Whether good or bad, those days were Labrum's favorite.

So when a nameless changeling stuck in the form of the Element Bearer of Laughter showed up instead of Clypeus, and then immediately got the squad chased by the Manehattan street guards, he knew it was going to be a fun day.

The chase itself was relatively short, thanks to the ease of most changelings to blend into crowds. Proboscis (Mandible had clearly come up with that name on the spot – as far as changeling names went, Proboscis was only a little more dignified than Valvula, and the last Valvula Labrum had met had been bullied out of the hive for it) was something of an issue, though, since she couldn't shift to a form the guards hadn't seen _and_ stuck out like a sore thumb with her constant bouncing.

Mandible tried at one point to stop the latter, but he just ended up holding onto her as she bounced. He didn't even seem to weigh her down at all, and the landing after he lost his grip… Labrum thought he heard a crack, but at least Mandible got back up quickly. Changelings were tougher than their true forms looked. Mandible grumbled at Proboscis as they ran, but didn't try to stop the bouncing again.

Frons, ever the leader, had taken the charge in deciding where to run, but to Labrum his choices seemed almost random. He led them every which way, as long as it was away from the street guards. He seemed almost as angry as Mandible did, but if Labrum wasn't mistaken, it was directed more at Mandible than Proboscis.

Gena had disappeared somewhere along the way, but Labrum wasn't worried about her. She always did that in situations like this – she'd be somewhere above, disguised as a pegasus, tracking the rest of the squad's movements. That way, she could join back up with them if they successfully shook the guards off, or leave them to their fates if they got caught. She would be in a heap of trouble if the Queen found out she actually did that, of course, but Gena never made a secret of the fact that she _would_.

So when a blue pegasus filly with a yellow, frizzy mane came down and joined the squad in an alleyway half a dozen blocks from where they started, everypony else finally let their tension fall away. Except Proboscis, of course, who had seemed thoroughly unconcerned throughout the chase. In fact, it seemed like she–

"That was fun!" Proboscis said with a grin. She had finally stopped bouncing, but somehow looked no less excited. "Do you all do this often?"

"Only when we can't avoid it," Frons said. There was a harsh tone in his voice, befitting of a disappointed squad leader. Labrum knew that both Mandible and Gena had wanted the position more than Frons had, but Frons really was the best one for the job. Not that they had a choice; squad leaders were personally appointed by the Queen.

"Why is _she_ still here?" Gena asked, pointing an accusing hoof at Proboscis, "She almost got us all captured, maybe even on purpose, and we're no closer to finding Clypeus. I say we leave them both behind and get the buzz out of this city before the street guards start a full-blown city-wide search for us!"

Proboscis seemed oblivious to the accusation. Frons looked like he was about to respond, but it was Mandible who spoke. "You know we can't do that, Gena. Clypeus is our squad mate and might be in trouble, Proboscis needs to see the Queen to get unstuck, and if we leave either of them behind, the Queen will have our exoskeletons!"

"I–" Frons began, but Gena rounded on Mandible.

"The Queen can buzz off for all I care! I'm not getting my tail caught for that pink maggot!" The changeling swears sounded odd coming from the little pegasus filly.

"Guys–"

"I don't like the situation either, Gena, but we have no choice! We have to stick up for the hive, and right now that means Clypeus and Proboscis!"

Frons looked like he was about to blow up. "SHUT UP!" he shouted. Mandible and Gena obeyed immediately. Even Proboscis looked taken aback. Satisfied with the shocked silence, Frons schooled his voice back to his usual level but decisive tone. "Mandible is right."

Labrum was sure the smug satisfaction that lit up in Mandible's face would be there for the rest of the day. Gena, meanwhile, was wearing a pout befitting of her young face.

Frons continued, "We do have to get out of the city as soon as we can, but the first priority has to be finding Clypeus. But to do that, we need to figure out where he is."

As Frons left that statement hanging in the air, it seemed safe to speak. Labrum piped up, "Maybe he just got held up and is on his way to the original meeting point?"

"That'll be crawling with street guards by now," Mandible pointed out. Apparently he didn't remember the local name for them any more than Labrum did, or he simply refused to use it.

"Police officers," Gena corrected meekly. She avoided looking at Mandible or Frons.

"Gesundheit."

Frons sighed. "We may not have any other choice. Who knows where else we'd be able to find him?"

"Maybe _they_ know where he is?" Proboscis said from behind Labrum. He turned around and saw her pointing out of the alleyway and across the street, at a pair of stallions who were arguing loudly.

"So help me the Queen," Mandible began, storming over towards Proboscis, "Don't you buzzing _dare_ do the same thing all o..." he trailed off, ears twitching.

"Mandible?" Labrum prompted.

"Shh. Listen."

The arguing stallions were loud enough to reach across the street now, but neither seemed to notice there were other "ponies" around. One of them, a brown pegasus, was pointing accusingly at a yellow earth pony. The pegasus looked angry, the earth pony apologetic. Any changeling could identify it on sight as a lover's spat.

"..._please_, Gassy!" the earth pony pleaded. "You know I wouldn't do that kind of thing, ever!"

_Gassy?_ Jeez, Labrum knew pony names were silly, but that was a very unfortunate nickname.

"I _thought_ I knew that, but what do you expect me to believe? The police came knocking last night to tell me you've been arrested, and for breaking into a jewelry store of all things?!"

"I didn't, I swear! I… don't _think_ I did, anyway!"

"Then where _were_ you last night, huh, Golden Carrot? Not at home in my bed, that's for sure!"

"I _told_ you already! Somepony who looked just like you came into my house and knocked me out, and I woke up this morning in my basement! I haven't been anywhere near that store in weeks!"

"Likely story! Who'd even want to do something like that?"

Labrum had heard enough. He looked at the others, and their expressions – except Proboscis' neutral smile – told him they had all reached the same conclusion.

It was Frons who finally broke the silence between them. His tone was level as usual, but there was a touch of resignation in it. "Well, everypony. It sounds like we have a jail break to plan."

Labrum couldn't help but grin. This was turning into an excellent day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gassy's full name is Noble Gas.


	4. Insecurities

At two floors tall, the Manehattan East police station was a low building for the big city, but an imposing one nonetheless. Wide and elaborately designed to intimidate criminals and provide a symbol of protection for the more upstanding citizens, it sat at a street corner and loomed over everything despite its size. An alleyway on the right of the station separated it from the rest of the buildings on its street.

It was one of the last places Gena wanted to be right then. But Frons, Mandible and Labrum were all convinced Clypeus was in there, so she had no choice.

At least everypony had agreed that Proboscis couldn't be part of the jail break. Since she had spent the chase unable to shift, the police probably thought she was a pony accomplice. Her description would have reached every officer in eastern Manehattan by now, surely, not to mention the station. It didn't help that she seemed unable to remove her distinctive hat.

As much as she disliked the pink gumball, Gena wished she could have switched places with Mandible. But Frons had quietly asked Mandible to keep an eye on Proboscis and make sure she didn't cause trouble, giving Gena no chance to volunteer. Asking after Frons had already assigned the job would've gone poorly.

The fact remained that she would rather spend time alone with a potential lying traitor than go right into the bufogren's den. That way, if things went wrong for the squad, Gena was mostly in the clear.

Of course, Mandible _was_ right. If she ever did leave the squad behind like that, she'd never be able to show her face in the hive again. The Queen's temper towards traitors was legendary, after all. But what did it matter? Gena had never felt at home in the hive. And at the end of the day, the Queen was just another basic buzzhole like the rest of them, but with a crown. She could make that sacrifice without regretting a thing.

Maybe when Gena finally left everything behind, she would settle down as a pegasus. Find a nice mare or stallion to feed off of for the rest of her life, and perhaps even love in return, if changelings were truly capable of it. They would get married and build a home, fill it with a family of little half-breeds… She would sooner die than let it show in front of the others, but she had always had a soft spot for all the sappy, romantic nonsense ponies went through when they loved each other.

That was why she preferred to take the places of little fillies rather than of lovers. She didn't want to inadvertently ruin her victims' love lives the way it seemed Clypeus might have.

Back in the present, however, she found herself sneaking into the alleyway next to the police station, alongside Frons and Labrum. It had only taken Frons a few minutes of carefully talking to ponies on the street to learn that the holding cells were in the basement towards the back. Supposedly, you could talk to the prisoners through the basement windows facing the alleyway, though most ponies avoided them. It seemed like poor security to Gena, but ponies were never much good at that.

Thankfully, nopony was standing guard outside the station, so getting into the alleyway giving themselves away was fairly easy. Near the end of the alley, as the ponies on the street had said, a series of windows lined the base of the building. They were all thin and wide, too thin for even a changeling to get out through – there were limits to how small they could become, which Gena brushed against daily with her filly forms – and barred up for good measure. At least the ponies did that much right.

Through the fifth window, a familiar golden earth pony caught Gena's attention. He had a green mane and a carrot for a cutie mark, and he looked like he'd never been sadder in his life. Gena knew that he had.

"Found him," she alerted the others, who began moving over to her. "Psst, Clype!"

The changeling in Golden Carrot's guise looked around as though uncertain where the sound had come from.

"Clypeus, over here," Labrum said, successfully drawing Clypeus' attention to the window. Gena thought the sight of the squad almost drew a smile to Clypeus' mouth, but she dismissed it as a trick of the mind.

"Oh, hey, everypony. Are you here to get me out of this cell?" Clypeus' voice betrayed no joy at the prospect.

"We are," Labrum answered simply.

"What happened?" Frons asked. "We heard you were arrested for breaking into a jewelry store, but I didn't really believe it until I saw you here. Since when do you steal jewelry?"

"Yeah, Clype," Labrum said with a soft laugh, "I'd expect that from Frons, not you." That earned him a glare from Frons. It was true, though – when the mission allowed it, Frons had been known to bring along… souvenirs, especially of the shiny variety.

"I just wanted to get a gift for Noble Gas… that's this stallion's coltfriend," Clypeus explained, then hesitated. "Uh, because, you know, gifts bring the love to the forefront so it's easier to drain." Despite the faltering, something about that last sentence made it sound practiced.

"But you got caught," Gena said, more harshly than she meant to, "and now the only gift you've given Noble Gas is relationship trouble! We found out you were here because he and the real Golden Carrot were arguing about you. Did you even think about what your failure might do to them? To _us_? No, no you didn't, because you just wanted to bring a wimpy pegasus a gift."

Clypeus lowered his head in shame. Gena looked at Frons and Labrum and realized they were both giving her odd looks. "What?"

"Just didn't think you'd care, is all," Frons said. He looked amused.

"I don't!" Another thing that came out more forcefully than intended. That happened far too often for her liking.

Labrum was outright laughing now. Laughing! At her!

"Let's just get this moper out of the cell already," she grumbled. The bufogren's den would be much better than this.

* * *

Elsewhere, Mandible cursed the need to blink.

* * *

On Frons' instruction, Gena took the form of a pegasus police officer she'd seen earlier. Labrum and Frons followed suit. The plan was to sneak in through a window, but if they happened to be seen by anypony inside, they would look like they belonged there.

The tactic was a gamble – while Frons had wrung out every potentially important bit of information about the inside of the station that Clypeus could share, Clypeus hadn't known which officers were currently at the station. If the officers they'd picked were in the building, or returned while _they_ were, it could ruin everything.

The first step was finding an unguarded window that was open enough that they could open it the rest of the way from the outside. It was a quick, painless process, and less than half a minute after they began looking, Labrum was swinging open a perfectly sized second-floor window. He waved for Gena and Frons to go through ahead of him.

The room was a simple office, divided into six cubicles – it was empty of ponies at the moment, but most of the cubicles showed signs of recent use. Papers were strewn everywhere, and from what little Gena managed to read in the short time she had in the room, she could tell they were chock full of confidential information about local ponies.

_We didn't even need to shapeshift to break in here, _Gena mused. Any mischievous pegasus filly could get in and read this stuff if she wanted.

When she left the swarm, maybe Gena could earn some bits by teaching ponies about security?

Her thoughts were interrupted by Frons. "Gena, come on," he said from the door, motioning for her to follow with his hoof.

The hallway was just as empty as the office had been. Gena's ears twitched as she realized there was no sound to be heard from any of the nearby rooms either. Was the whole floor empty of ponies?

Frons led the squad towards the staircase that led down to the ground floor, then stopped, holding out a hoof to make Gena and Labrum do the same. After a moment, she realized why.

From below, she could hear muffled voices, though she couldn't make out the words. Both were feminine, she thought, even if one was deep and monotonous. The other voice, by contrast, sounded shrill and excitable.

The squad waited until the voices stilled and what Gena assumed to be the front door opened and closed. Seemingly confident that they could handle any ponies remaining on the ground floor now, Frons led the way down the stairs.

The staircase led down to a short hallway that was just as boring as the one they had just been in. A closed door to the right was labeled as leading towards the reception, where the voices seemed to have come from, while a perpendicular hallway to the left promised more offices. Gena had never realized how literal the word "officer" could be.

The squad continued straight ahead. Frons almost made it look like he knew what he was doing, until he stopped right in front of the staircase down to the cells. "Buzz, the keys!" he exclaimed in a low voice.

"Aren't they going to be down there?" Labrum asked.

"This place needs to contain unicorns," Frons pointed out, "so they can't have the keys within line of sight, or any unicorn or changeling with levitation skills worth anything would be able to escape easily."

"It wouldn't surprise me," Gena muttered.

"Maybe Clypeus knows where they keep them," Labrum suggested, "and, uh, didn't think to tell us that."

Frons considered it. "Maybe. We might as well go and talk to him before taking any risks up here."

Gena couldn't help but laugh as the three of them trotted down the stairs and she immediately spotted a hook on the wall to their right. Clearly meant to hang the keys on, it would be within line of sight and magic from each of the seven cells along the left wall. The hook was empty now – had they already run into the unicorn problem and learned from their mistake?

Her mirth was cut short as Frons reached their destination and gaped.

"What?" Labrum said and flew ahead, joining Frons in staring at Clypeus' cell. Gena had already pieced together what they were gaping at by the time she caught up, but she still felt her jaw drop when she saw it. Her ears twitched at the rumble of hooves on wood in the reception above them, but she barely registered the sound in her surprise.

The cell was empty, and the missing police officers had just come home.

It all really had been too easy.


	5. A Midsummer Police Dream

Before Frons even realized he was gaping at the empty cell, his mind was racing through possibilities and solutions. The fact that Clypeus had once again vanished was just another problem on the pile, and if there was one thing he knew how to handle, it was problems.

"I think the police officers just got back to the station," Gena said, ears leaned back so she could listen towards the ceiling. Sure enough, he could hear the sounds of hoofsteps on the floor above them. Many hoofsteps – by the sound of it, there were at least a dozen police officers up there. Another problem, but perhaps also a solution.

"First priority is not getting caught," Frons ordered, frowning at the relief in Gena's expression. "But we have to try to find out where Clypeus went. Split up, blend in, see what you can learn in a few minutes, then meet me in the office we came in through."

His squad mates nodded in acknowledgement, Gena a half second later than Labrum.

As they reached the hallway intersection above the stairs to the "dungeons" (a laughable description compared to the real dungeons back home), they each went their own way. Frons went left, towards the reception area.

The reception area was a large room, large enough that Frons would call it a lobby if it were a little more ostentatious in design. By the wall to Frons' right sat a long desk with a simple, unoccupied chair behind it, covered in files. Much of the rest of the room was empty space, though.

Empty except for the ten or so uniformed police officers who were talking to each other. A quick scan told Frons that the one he was impersonating wasn't in the crowd.

"Wind Chaser!" greeted an orange earth stallion with white coat patterns as he spotted Frons. "I thought you went home. Stomach feeling better?"

The real Wind Chaser had gone home? It seemed luck was at least somewhat on his side today, despite all that had happened. But it did mean Frons had to explain why he was here. He opted to gamble on a joke. "I _am_ home!"

The stallion gave him an odd look, but chuckled. "Good old Chaser. Seriously, though, I saw the kick that pegasus filly gave you up there. Looked like it hurt like hay."

Pegasus filly? …of course.

"Yeah, it did," Frons agreed, "but I'll just rest up here at the station a little while. I'll be fine." Frons hoped that was true for the real Wind Chaser. Gena had a mean pair of hindhooves, even in her preferred filly forms. He usually dreaded sparring with her.

"Suit yourself," the stallion simply said.

"Hey, I was just down by the cells to check on Golden Carrot," Frons began. At a confused look from the stallion, he elaborated, "you know, the jewelry burglar? But the cell was empty, and there was no sign of him having broken out. Do you know anything about that?"

The stallion thought for a second. "I don't. I just got back, so if either of us two should know, it's not me. But go ask Public Notice if you haven't already. She _was_ on reception duty, after all."

"Right, thank you." Frons put on a slightly woozy look before he turned around, to give the stallion the impression that the kick had left him not thinking clearly. It might help dissuade any suspicions.

Now he just had to figure out which officer in the room was Public Notice without letting on that he didn't know. Fortunately, there were only three mares among them. One was a dark blue pegasus. Frons recognized her as the mare Gena was impersonating, so if Public Notice had been on reception duty during the chase, she wouldn't be that one. That left a green unicorn who was chatting with two of the stallions, and a bored-looking gray earth pony who was looking at some files near, but not behind, the desk.

The latter had a sign and a brush for a cutie mark. In Frons' experience, pony names often had something to do with their cutie marks, even as the ponies claimed they were unrelated. He was willing to bet that the gray mare was Public Notice.

"Hey, Notice," he said, approaching her. A second passed. Had he been wrong? But no, Public Notice finally looked up from the files.

"What do you want?" she asked. The sheer apathy in her voice washed over Frons like a tide that didn't care what the ponies on the beach thought of it.

Frons shook it off. "I just wanted to know if you know where Golden Carrot went."

"Who."

"The jewelry burglar." Hadn't anypony in this station bothered to learn the stallion's name?

"Oh. Yeah, he left about five minutes ago," she said as though it were the most natural thing in the world. "An annoying pink mare bailed him out. Kept bouncing, going on about clippers or something. I don't know what that was all about, but she paid up, so I let him go."

_Mandible!_ Frons fought the urge to facehoof – valiantly, if he could say so himself. Later. He could facehoof later.

"A _pink_ mare?" a short, blue earth stallion who had been within earshot interjected sternly. A pair of gold bars on his uniform matched the star on his flank. Frons thought it marked him as a captain. The stallion continued. "She wouldn't happen to have a deeper pink, bubbly mane, and maybe a long coat and a purple hat that seemed stuck on her head?"

"Yes, that sounds like her," Public Notice said simply.

The short chief has a similarly short fuse. "Notice, you blind fool!" he shouted. "That's the mare we've all been out looking for!" He turned around and began barking orders. "Breaktime's over, everypony! The suspect has to be near the station! Notice, you're still on reception duty, and don't buck it up this time if the suspect comes back! Chaser, go inform the others in the back, then get some rest for that belly of yours. The rest of you, come with me! We'll catch those changelings yet!"

And so he led seven police officers out through the double front doors of the station, leaving Frons behind with Notice.

This was bad. The agreed meeting spot was close to the station, making it likely that the police officers would find Mandible, Proboscis and Clypeus and chase them away. If they were even together – Mandible wouldn't have let Proboscis go into the station if he had anything to say about it.

"I… should go do as he said," Frons told Notice, who had positioned herself back behind the desk.

"You should," was all she replied.

Frons, of course, had no intention of doing so. When he left the reception, he headed straight for the stairs up to the second floor. On the way to the office, he encountered a unicorn mare who looked perpetually dumbfounded. He told her the captain wanted her to go and polish the brooms in the first floor closet, and smiled in satisfaction as she ran off. The fewer ponies the captain had by his side, the better.

The office was, thank the Queen, empty aside from Gena and Labrum. Gena stood by the window, while Labrum, in his yellow, white-maned pegasus form, was looking through the files on one of the desks.

"Good news and bad news," Frons said before they could even acknowledge his presence, continuing as he walked into the middle of the room. "Good news is Clypeus is out there with Proboscis and hopefully Mandible. Bad news is Proboscis talked to the receptionist and now almost everypony is going back out to look for her near the station. We have to go, _now_!"

Gena facehoofed. Frons could relate, but there was no time for that.

Gena opened the window wider. "Let's go then," she said. "Before they get caught or we do."

Labrum gave both of them an odd look, then said, cautiously, "What are you two talking about?"

Frons whirled around at a sound behind him. In the doorway, a yellow, white-maned pegasus stallion stood, laughing.

Frons facehoofed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some names that didn't (and in some cases probably won't) make it in here, because nopony had any reason to mention them:  
\- The orange, white-patterned stallion Frons talked to is Traffic Pattern.  
\- Gena is impersonating Royal Hue.  
\- Labrum is impersonating Vigilant Watch.  
\- The captain's name is Strict Order. (His wife, whom we probably won't meet, is an attorney named Delicate Law.)  
Thank you to Darkstarling for helping me come up with names!
> 
> Does anyone have a favorite member of changeling squad 833 yet?


	6. Reunion

Clypeus frowned.

Being in a cell had sucked, but listening to Mandible go off on his rescuer wasn't much better. Apparently Proboscis hadn't been supposed to get Clypeus out the way she did, and now Frons, Gena and Labrum were inside the station looking for an empty cell. And to make matters worse, it seemed about a dozen police officers had just gone on break, all at once.

He hadn't quite gathered where the changeling in the Pinkie Pie form and noir getup had come from, but he was grateful. It had been nice to get out of a tricky situation peacefully for once, not having to worry about getting caught, about hurting ponies or taking things from them.

At least Mandible had given him something to do while they waited for the rest of the squad, something that helped keep Clypeus from listening to the seemingly undeserved tirade Proboscis was receiving. Standing by the mouth of the alleyway the ornery changeling had brought them to, Clypeus looked diagonally across an intersection to the front of the police station.

Unfortunately, nothing was happening, and so his focus drifted.

"–and yeah, you did get Clypeus out of there, great buzzing job, but _you should have told us_! We could have tried it without sending the others in on a maggot's errand! And without risking somepony recognizing you! Tell me, what do we do if Frons, Gena and Labrum get caught in there because of you?" Mandible gave Proboscis no time to answer. "They won't take bail for three changelings, even if you have enough bits to feed an army–"

Mandible did have a point, but it was hard to listen to. After all, it was all Clypeus' fault.

He had always preferred giving things to ponies over taking them away. He wasn't the happiest of changelings himself, he knew, but that just made him appreciate it more when he could bring happiness to a pony with a well-placed gift. The excuse he told other changelings was true, of course – receiving gifts brought a pony's love for the perceived giver to the forefront, making it easier to drain – but the draining was his least favorite part of it. It was a shame he had to do it to survive.

The problem with wanting to give things to ponies, though, was that you had to have something to give. Which meant he needed to take something. Usually he settled for small things, things that were easy to steal without notice, but last night he had gotten too ambitious. For reasons he could barely remember, he had convinced himself that Noble Gas would be absolutely thrilled at receiving a particularly shiny piece of jewelry from his coltfriend. A piece of jewelry that had been protected by multiple alarm spells.

His time in jail served him right for trying to steal something so expensive from a unicorn's shop, but it wasn't fair on the rest of the squad, on Proboscis, and certainly not on Noble Gas or the real Golden Carrot. Clypeus hoped the police officers would eventually figure out what had happened, so that they could at least set things straight between the lovers.

Clypeus was jolted out of his thoughts as he noticed motion across the intersection. The doors to the police station opened and eight police officers rushed out, spearheaded by the sergeant. Strict Order, Clypeus thought his name was. Strict Order began pointing at officers and in the various directions the roads went, clearly issuing orders that matched his name. The officers split up, but the sergeant stayed put, looking expectantly at the doors.

Two of the officers were heading their way.

Mandible was still chewing out Proboscis, who was sitting in front of him, frowning. "–what kind of changeling even thinks of a solution like that? Oh right, a buzzing idiotic one! You–"

Clypeus winced at the insult. Mandible could be rather harsh, even for a changeling. He didn't want to get caught in the crossfire, but he had to interrupt. "Mandible."

Mandible glared daggers.

"Police officers on their way here," Clypeus said quickly.

"Oh buzz." Mandible looked around quickly. The alleyway was much like every other alleyway in the city – narrow and dirty with few contents. This one had a large dumpster at its dead end, though, and it was that Mandible chose as a hiding spot. Clypeus reluctantly followed.

"Are you sure?" Proboscis said, not seeming to realize the urgency. "I mean, if you're going to go dumpster diving, at least bring your scuba gear!" Somehow, she produced swimming goggles and a snorkel from her mane before cannonballing into the dumpster. Trash overflowed in every direction as she landed, and the dumpster shook so hard the lid closed on its own once she was in. Everything went dark, leaving just enough light to see the contours of a large bag an inch in front of his muzzle.

"That was fun! What's next? Ooh, I have an idea: I spy with my little eye, something smelly!"

"Shh!" came Mandible's reply.

From outside, a deep stallion's voice was muffled by the stinking bags of garbage surrounding Clypeus. "I thought I heard something in this alleyway."

A mare with a strange accent replied, "Well, ain't nothin' here, is there, luv?"

"Doesn't look like it. It must've been that damn wind picking back up, I guess."

Muted hoofsteps told of the officers trotting away from the dumpster.

A minute or two later, wingflaps entered the alleyway from above.

"Looks like we're too late," said a stallion's voice in Frons' cadence. "The police must've chased them off if they were here."

"Let's head back to the hive and meet them there if they got away," Gena suggested. "I'm sick of taking risks."

Labrum sounded like he had been laughing and could barely contain it. "I still can't believe you thought that wimp was me!"

"Oh shut up," Gena said.

"Did you get it yet?" asked Proboscis in a loud whisper that was only barely muffled by the bags.

"Get what?" Clypeus said, wriggling to start pushing open the lid above him.

Proboscis launched upwards, slamming the lid open with her whole body. "IT WAS 'GARBAGE'!"

A chorus of surprised yelps came from outside, followed by Labrum breaking into another fit of laughter. Clypeus wasn't much for laughter himself, but even he wished he could've seen the looks on Frons and Gena's borrowed faces.

As he pulled himself out of the dumpster with a slight smile, Clypeus wondered if maybe traveling with Proboscis wouldn't be so bad.

He also wondered if any of the others had realized she wasn't a changeling yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Going into this, I was a little skeptical about my ability to write Clypeus, because he's a rather downcast character with a less established place in the group dynamic, but I think it's working out fine so far.


	7. Art of Distress

Party Popper was having the time of her life. At least the part of her life that was really hers.

Why had Pinkie Pie never told her how much FUN adventure could be? Surely she could've mentioned it at some point between creating her, teaching her about Pinkie's friends, sending her to have FUN with those friends, and getting those same friends to ruthlessly murder all the other clones, leaving Party Popper – excluded from the massacre by dumb luck – to flee the town in terror once she understood what had happened. A simple "Hey, do you know what's FUN? Adventure!" _had_ to fit in there somewhere.

It wasn't all bad, though. This way, she was getting to discover the joy of adventure for herself, and that was FUN too.

At the moment, adventure had found its way to a clothing store on Saddle Row. After Frons filled the squad in on why the police officers were out looking for Party Popper again, Labrum had brought up how much she stuck out, looking like Pinkie Pie. Party Popper didn't see it. Her coat and hat made a brilliant disguise! But the police officers knew about her outfit too.

And so Clypeus had suggested getting her a new outfit that would hide her better, and quickly volunteered to go into the store with her. All of them coming would be "conspicuous", he said, whatever that meant. Mandible hadn't been satisfied with just Clypeus going with her, but Frons had wanted to talk to the rest of the squad while Party Popper and Clypeus were inside.

A little bell rang as Clypeus led the way into the store, disguised as a yellow, blue-maned unicorn mare with freckles. For some reason, Labrum had looked surprised when Clypeus shapeshifted into the form, but Popper just thought he looked cute like that.

Inside, they were met by a bespectacled, blue earth mare with her pink mane tied up in the back.

"Welcome to Rarity For You," the mare said politely. "My name's Blue Bobbin. I'll be your–" She cut herself off as she got a better look at Party Popper. "Oh! Pinkie Pie, so good to see you again. How may I help you and your friend today?"

Clypeus tensed.

"Pinkie Pie?" Party Popper asked automatically. "Who's that?"

Blue Bobbin raised her eyebrows and frowned. She backtracked, but kept her composure. "Oh, I'm terribly sorry," she said, "I must have mistaken you for somepony else. You look and sound very much alike."

"That's okay!" Party Popper said. "I get that a lot."

"So how may I help you today?" Blue Bobbin repeated.

Clypeus was about to say something, but Popper spoke first. "What's the best you have in disguises?"

"Disguises?" Blue Bobbin echoed, but professionalism once again replaced the surprise in seconds. "If you're looking for something that hides your natural appearance, I suppose the best choice we have would be the Wear-Do-Well line. You'll probably like it – it shares some stylistic similarities with your current outfit."

"Sounds good!"

"But we don't have it on display, so I'll have to go looking for it in the back."

"Take as long as you need," Clypeus said with a mare's pleasant voice. He didn't smile, but he sounded pleased.

Blue Bobbin nodded in acknowledgement and headed toward the back of the shop.

Once Blue Bobbin was out of earshot, Clypeus turned to Popper and said, cautiously, "You're… not a changeling, are you? You don't act like any changeling I ever knew..."

"Well, duh!" Popper said. "I'm an earth pony!"

Of course there was a little more to it than that, but she didn't like to talk about her origins. The memories of that day were not exactly FUN, and if word got out about what she was, it might make its way back to Princess Twilight. Party Popper didn't want to die.

Sometimes Party Popper was glad the Mirror Pool hadn't given her all of Pinkie Pie's memories. She had kept Pinkie Pie's basic personality, knowledge and skills – facts of the world and how to do things – but she didn't remember the things Pinkie Pie had experienced, or all the ponies Pinkie Pie had known. There were many things she knew, sometimes about other ponies Pinkie had met but she hadn't, which she didn't remember learning.

She was glad because it meant fleeing Ponyville had left her with no memories to miss from a life she never experienced, and no uncertainty about whether something she remembered was really her own memory. But most of all, she didn't think she could bear living in constant fear of Twilight Sparkle and her Council of Harmony if she'd had memories of being their friend.

She wondered if Pinkie Pie or Twilight Sparkle had thought about how the Pool worked anywhere near as much as Party Popper had.

Musings like those had also led her to realize that the Pool exaggerated whichever traits were at the front of a pony's mind when she used it. When she cloned herself, Pinkie Pie had wanted to go along with whatever her friends were doing in order to have FUN, and so her clones all had a strong attraction to FUN and a willingness to go along with almost anything. As the second batch of clones started making more clones, each generation had been increasingly obsessed with FUN, and their willingness to go along when Applejack corralled them into the town hall and Twilight sat them down to watch paint dry had ultimately led to their demise.

"I don't think the others know that," Clypeus said. _Wait, know what?_ Popper mentally rewinded and found the answer.

"Ohhh." Popper said. That explained a lot. "So that's why Mandible wanted me to shapeshift!"

"Not so loud, Proboscis, Blue Bobbin could come back at any moment. Wait, is Proboscis even your real name?"

Real name? Did she even _have_ a real name? "Nope! Mandible made that up. I'm Party Popper." She held out a hoof to shake, but Clypeus just looked at it.

"So… if you're not a changeling, why are you here? Why are you helping us?"

"Isn't it obvious, silly? It's FUN!"

"Fun?" Clypeus gave a confused frown.

"FUN! We're going on an adventure, and doing FUN things like breaking you out of jail with my money, and I've never been friends with changelings before!"

"Friends?" How was he still frowning while repeating these words? "Changelings don't really do friendship. Only squads. And being in a changeling squad isn't really all that fun."

"Well, that's a downer," Popper said. "You should try it sometime! Friends are great as long as you're the original you!"

"What?"

"Nothing!" Popper's ear twitched at a sound. "Oh, I think Blue Bobbin's coming back."

"Don't tell the others you're not a changeling," Clypeus said quickly, but firmly. "If they find out, they'll – oh, there you are," he smiled at Blue Bobbin as she re-entered the room. The smile was as fake as his freckles.

Blue Bobbin was carrying a cardboard box on her back, muttering something about unicorns and shelves. She placed the box down on the floor and opened it up. Clypeus, being the only pony in the room with a horn, levitated an outfit out of the box.

"Here we go," Blue Bobbin said. "The Mysterious Wear-Do-Well! I must admit I never understood the name, but she insisted that was what it was called."

It looked vaguely familiar to Party Popper, but she couldn't remember why. She was used to that sensation. It probably meant it had some connection to Pinkie Pie's life. Maybe Pinkie Pie had seen an outfit like this one before, and Party Popper had retained some knowledge of what it looked like but no memory of seeing it?

She pushed those thoughts aside and focused on the outfit. It was a dark purple bodysuit with blue socks and a collar that formed two short tails at the back of the neck. A long, blue cape billowed out from underneath it. Something told Popper that it should be even longer, but it was already long enough that it would cover her cutie mark had the bodysuit not already done so. It came with a matching dark purple hat, which had an even wider brim than the one she was already wearing, as well as a translucent veil that would cover her face. It looked great.

At the front of the collar was a small emblem of a unicorn's head with a curly mane – Rarity, Popper realized with a start. As it occurred to her what Blue Bobbin had said the name of the store was, and just who had designed all the outfits around them, Party Popper felt a little queasy.

"I'll take it!" she said, wanting to do no such thing. If she had a choice, she'd rather burn it. She strained to keep up her polite smile. "How much?"

"Fifty bits," Blue Bobbin answered, "but don't you want to try–"

"Won't be necessary," Party Popper said, hoofing over the rest of her month's earnings at the bakery with little concern for how expensive that was. Not bothering to go to the changing room – it wasn't like ponies normally wore clothes anyway – she quickly stored her coat in her mane and put on the bodysuit while Blue Bobbin was counting the money. The suit was a little tight, but fit well enough for somepony who just wanted to leave.

She tried to take off her hat, but it wouldn't budge without pulling out her mane. _What the hay kind of glue even _was_ that?_ She put the wider-brimmed Wear-Do-Well hat on top of her existing one, trapping the veil between the hats.

"Popper..." Clypeus said, looking confused and concerned.

"Fits great, thank you, let's go!" Popper said loudly as she collected the change from Bobbin's counter and quickly turned towards the door. Clypeus had no choice but to follow.

"Have a nice–" Bobbin's confused voice was cut off as the door to Rarity's store closed behind Party Popper. A second or two later, Clypeus came out behind her.

"What was that all about?" he asked, sounding… worried? What did _he_ have to worry about?

"I just… I didn't want to keep the squad waiting!" she lied, sporting one of the most forced smiles she could remember making. "Now come on, Clype – we have a city to get out of."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TFW you send somepony into a store to get a better outfit for blending into crowds with and she comes out in a superhero costume with two hats stacked on top of each other. –_–
> 
> Any member of the squad other than Clypeus would knock out Blue Bobbin and steal an outfit, regardless of Popper's opinion.


	8. The Shortcut

Mandible had regrets.

He had brought Proboscis, or whatever her real name was, into their squad because he had thought that her running loose was a risk. That somepony might recognize her form as Pinkie Pie and realize she wasn't supposed to be in Manehattan. That they would get mildly suspicious and maybe go to the police officers with it. By the time anything was done about it, the squad would probably be long gone, he realized when he gave it more thought.

But what he hadn't expected was Proboscis herself bringing the police down on them so effectively through her incompetence. She was a menace of idiocy, and now the streets were filling up with police officers from all precincts, all looking for her and her five changeling companions.

At least he hoped she was just an idiot. Gena seemed to believe she was doing it on purpose, and who knew, maybe it took a traitor to spot one.

After Proboscis had disappeared from him at the station, Mandible had been skeptical of leaving her alone with Clypeus when they went into the clothing store, so when they came back into the alley where the squad was waiting, he let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.

Then he heard Labrum laughing behind him and it sunk in what Proboscis was wearing. It took all his willpower not to groan so loudly it'd draw the attention of every police officer within a mile.

Frons spoke before Mandible could. "That's not the outfit I would've taken," he said, "but what do I know about pony fashion. Well, as long as it does the job."

Mandible doubted that it would.

"Mandible," Frons continued, "you studied the map. How far is it to the edge of the city?"

"About half an hour, I think, going straight south by hoof." Normally, they would've flown, but _somepony_ had to be stuck in a form without wings.

"We'd better get going, then. Everypony shift." Every changeling except Proboscis took a new form – Mandible that of a red, yellow-maned pegasus – and Frons started leading them out of the alley and south

"Wait!" Proboscis said as they came to an intersection. "I just remembered I know a shortcut!" And so she bounced off to the left.

Mandible followed with his wings. "Pro–" He caught himself. No sense in outing them by using changeling names in public. "Party Popper, come back here!"

Proboscis stopped abruptly, causing Mandible to crash right into her. They tumbled around a few times until they came to a stop with Mandible lying with his back on the ground and Proboscis grinning down. Her two hats loomed over Mandible, adding to his embarrassment – it was one thing to look like a fool, but looking like a fool next to an actual fool was even worse.

"I didn't think you'd be _that_ excited about my shortcut!" Proboscis said as she continued bouncing.

The rest of the squad, most wingless except for Gena, caught up to Mandible. Frons offered a hoof to help him get up, but he didn't take it. He could get up on his own.

Proboscis had stopped at the next intersection towards the east, and was waving for the squad to follow.

"Let's just go, let her do her thing," Gena said. "Old Queeny can't say we didn't _try_ to get her to come with us."

"But she _can_ say we failed," Labrum said, looking eager to follow Proboscis wherever she was headed.

Clypeus looked thoughtful, but his slight frown remained shut.

Mandible groaned. As much as he regretted his decision to bring Proboscis along in the first place, the real reasons he'd had, the ones he didn't like to acknowledge even to himself, still applied. They couldn't just leave her behind. It just wasn't right.

"Labrum's right," Mandible said, though the Queen was the last thing on his mind. "Frons?"

Frons was looking pensively at Proboscis, who was waving even more frantically now. "No more splitting the squad. Let's–"

He was cut off by Proboscis screaming across the block. "ARE YOU COMING OR NOT?!"

"–go."

* * *

When they caught up to Proboscis, Mandible tried to point out to her that logically, there couldn't be a shortcut to the east because the closest part of the city border was straight to the south along the streets.

Proboscis simply said the shortcut wasn't to the east, and headed north. _North!_

When she took a third left turn and brought them westward, in the direction of Saddle Row, Mandible felt the need to dig his head into the ground. He had heard some griffons did that when they were startled, but he was sure this kind of frustration warranted it more.

Gena looked as peeved as Mandible felt. Had she been right about Proboscis? Was the pink mare leading them in circles – well, squares – to hold them up while the police mobilized everything they had to catch them?

_Wait… Shouldn't we have reached Saddle Row by now?_

He looked around and realized the area around him looked unfamiliar. In place of the tall buildings most of southeastern Manehattan was defined by, this area had small, dilapidated, seemingly abandoned buildings. It didn't take an expert in pony architecture to tell that they were clearly in the Manehattan style, apart from their size, but this definitely wasn't Saddle Row.

The rest of the squad didn't seem to have realized that something was strange about their surroundings, except maybe Labrum, who was laughing again. He laughed entirely too much for Mandible's liking, and always at the worst times.

"How did we…" Mandible said, mostly to himself. He trailed off as he followed Proboscis around a corner to the right, heading north. In front of them was a simple road heading into a forest. Next to it, a sign informed him they were leaving Manehattan. To his left and right, the transition between city and nature stretched as far as his eyes could see.

All he could manage was a single, flat word. "What."

"Told you I knew a shortcut!" Proboscis reminded him cheerily.

"We took _three left turns and a right_ and ended up at the _northern_ edge of the city!" Mandible protested, ignoring Labrum's hysterical laughing fit and Gena and Frons' dropped jaws. "Even the hive isn't that confusing! It doesn't make any _sense_! _You_ don't make any sense!"

Proboscis' smile faded. "Not everything in Equestria does. Sometimes you walk in a square and don't end up where you started. And sometimes you think the world works one way until somepony you thought was a friend…" She cut herself off, hesitated, then grinned again. Something about it looked different, but Mandible was too upset to pinpoint what it was. "Let's not talk about that. We have a Queen to see, right?"

Frons echoed her in a low, thoughtful voice. "Right." He walked ahead to take Proboscis' place at the front of the group.

"But– I– _what?!_" Mandible sputtered. "_WHAT?!_"

Nopony answered him as they walked into the forest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By all accounts, it doesn't make sense.
> 
> I do have an explanation in mind for the shortcut, but I don't know if it'll make it into the text of the story. I didn't get a good opportunity to establish it here and it probably won't actually matter later (and arguably doesn't right now either).
> 
> Basically, the idea is that some of Discord's chaos wasn't fully purged by the Elements each time they were used on him, leaving some spots that still don't quite make sense, such as this little bit of noneuclidean geometry in Manehattan (which for all I know might only work if you make three left turns first).
> 
> Pinkie Pie being Pinkie Pie is also a valid explanation.
> 
> And so I end Camp NaNoWriMo at 12,085 words. My original goal of 20k was set somewhat arbitrarily, since I wasn't sure how much I could expect of myself, but when I realized I wasn't going to make that, I set 10k as a secondary goal for myself. And given that I reached that secondary goal, and got into the habit of writing regularly (which I hope to keep up), I still consider this a success.
> 
> (To be absolutely clear, the end of Camp NaNoWriMo does not mean the fic is ending.)
> 
> UPDATE, September 18, 2019: This was originally chapter 9 of the story, but I decided to swap the positions of this and the next one (this changes nothing continuity-wise). So the next chapter was also written during Camp NaNoWriMo and is included in the wordcount given above.


	9. Preparations

"Fluttershy, would you be a dear and fetch me those banners?" Rarity asked, pointing at a box that Fluttershy knew would be just out of her telekinetic reach. The two ponies were out in the castle courtyard, working on the decorations for the upcoming Festival of Love.

"Of course," Fluttershy said, already in the air. She picked up the box in all four hooves and flapped her wings to lift it. It was heavier than she had expected, but she got it to Rarity without crashing into the grassy ground.

"Thank you ever so much," Rarity said, before opening the box to telekinetically pull out a large, rolled-up banner. "Whatever would I do without your help?"

_I don't know, walk? _Fluttershy pushed the thought aside. That wasn't fair – she knew nopony worked harder than Rarity to make sure everything would be perfect, except maybe Twilight and Cadence. Besides, if Fluttershy's friends knew how often she got the urge to snark at them, and how much fun she thought it would be, they might not like her anymore.

Twilight and Rainbow snarked at their friends all the time, but that was different. They were likeable ponies.

"Oh, it's no problem. The birds were ready to provide the music for the festival, so there wasn't much left for me to do," Fluttershy said instead. It was a better response, one that helped keep up the ruse that Fluttershy was a pony worth liking. She hated how naturally it came to her.

Rarity unfurled the first banner with her magic and frowned. She rolled it back up and unfurled a second. The frown deepened. "It seems we will have to re-order the banners. There must have been a slight misunderstanding."

Rarity turned the second banner around so Fluttershy could see. At each end of the banner was a drawing of a pony on a beach, sun shining above. The ponies were each on their hindlegs, leaning backwards to walk under a low horizontal pole belly-up without using their forelegs. It looked ridiculous. Between the drawings, elaborately designed red text said, "FESTIVAL OF LOW".

A part of Fluttershy wanted to laugh. She hated that part.

"Oh my," said the part of Fluttershy that was a better actress. She hated _that_ part even more. "I hope they have time to redo it."

"So do I, Fluttershy. The Festival of Love is only a few days away. But if they can't do it in time, we may have to call in the ace up our sleeve." A hint of trepidation in the voice told Fluttershy that Rarity would prefer it didn't come to that.

"Ace up our sleeve?" Fluttershy asked, unsure what Rarity meant.

"Pinkie Pie."

As though on cue, the party pony fell out of the sky. She pulled her face out of the grass and said, "Hi, Rarity! Hi, Fluttershy!"

"Hello, Pinkie," Fluttershy said gently but distractedly. She was looking up into the sky in an effort to work out where Pinkie had come from. All she could see was the sky and the castle, but Pinkie hadn't come in from the direction of the castle. Fluttershy shook her head and decided not to question it.

"Pinkie Pie!" Rarity exclaimed. "Are you alright?"

Fluttershy mentally kicked herself. Right, _that_ was what an actually good friend would say. Not just "hello, Pinkie" like some insensitive mule who didn't give a flying feather about whether or not her friend was injured after falling however far and crashing face first into the ground.

"Never better," Pinkie Pie said with a grin.

She was probably lying so Fluttershy wouldn't feel bad for being such a bad friend, because Pinkie was a good friend like that. Fluttershy didn't deserve it. At least whatever injuries Fluttershy might have been horribly insensitive about didn't show on the outside.

Pinkie continued, "Sooo, how are things going with the decorations?"

Rarity said nothing and simply unfurled one of the banners again, this time facing Pinkie Pie.

Pinkie laughed. Should Fluttershy have laughed?

"Other than this little… mishap, I think things are coming along nicely. We got this," Rarity said, looking at Fluttershy.

"You got this," Fluttershy corrected automatically. It wasn't like she was really much help, and the decorations _were_ officially Rarity's task. Fluttershy didn't deserve any credit for it.

"We got this together," Rarity insisted. "How about you, Pinkie? Is the baking coming along nicely?"

"Yup!" Pinkie said cheerfully. "I have a few dozen cakes in the ovens right now!" She pulled a single small kitchen timer out of her mane and checked it, then put it back in. "Have you ever tried baking in the royal kitchen? It's great!"

"I can't say I have tried that, no," Rarity said slowly, clearly sidestepping the fact that she never would. While she wasn't as impressively bad at it as her sister, Rarity was not one for baking. Neither was Fluttershy, but then, Fluttershy wasn't one for much of anything except knitting and taking care of animals.

"Me neither," she said. "Um, have you talked to any of the others?"

"Oh yeah! Rainbow's been practicing her Cupid's Arrow maneuver with the Wonderbolts. Can you believe she's trying to make a heart-shaped Rainboom?"

"So _that's_ why there's been a Rainboom every ten minutes for the last few hours?" Rarity asked, a tinge of irritation in her voice. The Sonic Rainbooms had a habit of briefly supercharging unicorn magic, which threw off Rarity's telekinetic aim while she was placing the decorations.

"Yep! Still no heart shaped ones, though."

"I'm sure she'll get it eventually," Fluttershy said. "If anypony can do it, it's her." She regretted the dumb statement immediately – _of course_ only Rainbow Dash could do it. She was the only pony who could perform a Sonic Rainboom in the first place, after all.

Pinkie Pie pretended not to have noticed how obvious and stupid Fluttershy's sentiment was and moved on. "The Apples have made lots of apple treats for the Festival, and they're making good progress on building the stage. They weren't actually asked to do that, though, so there were a couple annoyed construction workers skulking around, until I gave them some cake to cheer them up."

Rarity nodded in approval.

"That's nice of you," Fluttershy said.

"And Twilight's thing with the artificer seemed to be going well too, but I didn't really get a chance to talk before the magic explosion sent me here."

"Magic explosion?" Fluttershy asked, shocked. "Is everypony alright?"

Pinkie waved it off. "Oh, it was just a harmless little burst of chaos. Turns out artificing is delicate work that goes boom if somepony distracts the unicorns. Whoops!" Pinkie shrugged. "I'm pretty sure me going flying was the worst that happened, but I think I saw Twilight sporting a fantastic mustache before I shot through the roof. And if you see Shining Armor, try not to mention spoons." Pinkie leaned in close to Rarity and Fluttershy, then whispered so loudly that somepony at the other end of the courtyard would probably hear it. "_He might be sensitive about it!_"

"We'll keep that in mind," Rarity said. "It sounds like everypony has the preparations well in hoof."

A ringing sound caught Fluttershy's attention. She quickly identified the source when she saw it shaking.

"Uhm, Pinkie? I think your mane is ringing."

Pinkie looked up at her vibrating mane. "The cakes! I have to go!" Before Fluttershy or Rarity could say anything more, she vanished, briefly leaving behind a pink blur where she had stood.

"Did…" Fluttershy hesitated. "Did you actually see her move?"

Rarity's eyes said "no", but her mouth simply said, "It's Pinkie Pie, darling."

"...yeah," Fluttershy agreed. "It's Pinkie Pie."

Neither of them fully knew what they meant by it, but they both understood. If there was one thing Pinkie Pie was, it was unique.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so, the moment I pick a POV character who's not a clone or a shapeshifter, I end up giving her impostor syndrome.
> 
> Writing Fluttershy's doubt and self-criticism in this chapter tore at my soul.
> 
> UPDATE, September 18, 2019: This was originally chapter 8 of the story, but I decided to swap the positions of this and the previous one (this changes nothing continuity-wise).


	10. 9:50 from Bridlewater

Bridlewater seemed like a pleasant place, Party Popper thought. The rural town, located about an hour's trot to the northwest of Manehattan through the woods, sat idyllically between the Manehattan forest and a lake.

Party Popper had passed through the town once before, while looking for her place in the world. Ponyville had been violently ripped off the table, and there had been several reasons she couldn't go to Canterlot or the rock farm she knew Pinkie Pie had been raised on, so she had picked a direction at random and ended up on a train to Manehattan.

Now that she saw Bridlewater from within, rather than sulking behind a window, she couldn't help but think that maybe this was where she should have stepped off the train. The town reminded her of what she'd seen and known of Ponyville before she left. Earth ponies were walking the roads, interspersed with the occasional unicorn, but unlike in Manehattan, many of them wore happy smiles and greeted each other.

Working at the Glazed Miracles Bakery for Sweet Tooth and Bear Hug had been great, but Manehattan had never quite felt like a home. It had only been a distorted reflection of one she didn't truly remember. Bridlewater was just another such reflection. She knew that. But maybe it would have been a better one.

She thought she caught a few of the locals giving her and her travel companions odd looks before hurrying along in the opposite direction. Or was she just imagining that?

The changelings seemed unconcerned. They had all taken on earth pony forms before they entered the town, except for Gena, who had remained a pegasus.

Popper suddenly realized they all looked a little tired. Sometimes she forgot that not everypony had as much energy as she did.

"Is it much further?" she asked.

Gena squinted at her. "Of course it is. You know where it is, don't you?"

Oh right. Party Popper had no idea where the changeling hive was, but they thought she was a changeling and Clypeus had said not to let them know otherwise, so…

"I forgot," she said simply. Keeping secrets was hard, but she had been hiding what she was for years now, so the lie came easily.

"You forgot," Gena repeated flatly. "How long _have_you been out of the hive anyway?"

"Oh, at least a few years." That was true. She had never been to the hive in the few years she could remember. She didn't know anything about the hive beyond that it existed, so she didn't think Pinkie Pie had been there either (at least before Popper's creation), but that wouldn't have counted anyway.

Mandible cut in, "The hive is on the other side of the country, in the forests ponies call the Undiscovered West. It's a long way yet, unless you know any more _shortcuts_." He wrung the last word like a wet towel, squeezing a waterfall of irritation out of it.

"Sorry, I don't know any that go there," Popper said, bouncing over the puddle of irritation on the metaphorical floor. "That far, huh. Sounds like we have a lot of walking ahead of us!"

Clypeus' frown deepened at that. Popper really had to do something about his seemingly near-permanent frown at some point. It sorely needed to be turned upside-down.

Labrum wasn't happy about the long walk either. "I really wish you could fly, Proboscis. All this trotting is going to kill me."

"That's why we're in town rather than walking around it," Frons said. "We're going to take the train."

The rest of the squad – except Gena, who was still staring at Popper – looked about as relieved as Popper felt. She hadn't really wanted to bounce the whole way on her hooves either, especially dressed in clothes of Rarity's design. If she couldn't burn them, maybe throwing them out a train window would be the next best thing.

Thinking of ways to dispose of the expensive clothes reminded her of something.

"Um, do you guys have any bits? I don't think I have enough left for six cross-country tickets."

"Can you pay for your own?" Frons asked. "Mandible, Clypeus and I will handle the rest."

"Oki doki!"

Why did _that_ make Clypeus frown?

* * *

As instructed, Party Popper bought a single adult ticket to Las Pegasus – all the while feeling Gena's gaze on her back – and soon enough, Frons, Mandible and Clypeus returned. Somehow, they had gotten five tickets, getting the entire squad on board, though Gena, Labrum and Clypeus had to shift into foals first.

Clypeus sat down next to Party Popper in the train, taking the middle seat. Before the others found their seats next to them, he whispered, "That's a family of five losing their train ride."

_Oh._

"Well," she whispered back, "I guess we'd better enjoy it a little on their behalf, then!"

The attempt to cheer Clypeus up clearly failed. He simply said, "I guess."

For whatever it was worth, the train ride _was_ rather enjoyable, even if it did leave her a little restless. The view was great, as the mountains and hills and rural towns of northeastern Equestria passed by them, and when she couldn't sit still anymore, the train's dining car was there to occupy both her mind and her stomach with delicious desserts. She was even allowed to help out a little in the kitchen car afterwards, until Mandible found her. Party Popper didn't see what the big deal was – the kitchen staff had been very nice and welcoming.

Even with those things to occupy herself with, the ride was slow. The train stopped at nearly every station it passed through, only skipping a town that appeared to be abandoned for some reason, and there was a long way to travel. By the afternoon, they were only halfway to their destination, with Canterlot Mountain in sight on the horizon.

Something about that tugged at Party Popper's mind. It felt like there was something obvious and important that she hadn't thought about, but she couldn't place what it was.

Meanwhile, Frons was looking at a railroad map he'd picked up in Bridlewater.

"So according to this," he said, "we actually need to get off the train at the next stop, since this line goes on to Canterlot, and then wait there for a few hours until the next train to Las Pegasus departs."

"Sounds fine by me," Labrum said, "Taking the train sure beats walking across the country, but I'd still like to stretch these babies a little." He gestured to his back hooves.

"Wait, wait, wait," Party Popper said as the pieces began to click together in her mind. "Which stop is that?"

She really hoped Frons wasn't about to say what she thought he was about to say.

"Ponyville."

He was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bridlewater is named after the town of Bridgewater, NJ. I'd never heard of it before the day of writing and had no idea if it's anything like Bridlewater, though.


	11. Homecoming

Ponyville. The town that had haunted Popper's few memories her entire life.

"I can't go into Ponyville!" she said loudly. She was suddenly very glad she and the five changelings were alone in the car, all the other passengers in it having either left the train at previous stops or wandered off to the dining car for dinner.

"Why not?" Labrum asked.

Party Popper wracked her brain for a plausible excuse and found that she actually had one. "I look like Pinkie Pie, and she lives there. If that was a risk in Manehattan, where she's just a celebrity, can you imagine what it'll be like in a town where everypony knows her personally?"

"Surely not _everypony_–" Frons began.

"_Everypony_," Popper stressed, "in Ponyville knows her."

"She has a point," Mandible said. "I did bring her with me because ponies might recognize Pinkie Pie and realize she wasn't supposed to be there, since the newspapers said she was in Canterlot. Ponyville might be worse."

"Then we just need to make sure nopony recognizes her," Frons said. He turned to Popper. "You've already got the costume you stole in Manehattan, that should hide you well enough. Especially if you can take off that other hat now?"

She nudged the purple hat on her head, which matched her long purple coat. Her mane followed as it moved. "I think it might be stuck forever."

Labrum gave a little laugh. "Hey, where _is _that ridiculous getup anyway?"

Popper caught Clypeus glancing questioningly at her mane. She had hoped nopony would bring up the Wear-Do-Well outfit. "I, uh, kinda sorta…"

"Spit it out," Mandible said.

"I didn't eat it! But… I kinda threw it out a window an hour or two after we left Bridlewater."

Labrum tried to stifle his laughter and failed.

Mandible just gaped. "Why the buzz would you do _that_?!"

"That's not important right now!" Popper said quickly. "The point is I don't have it and… and… I really don't want to be caught."

"Neither do we," Frons said, looking a little puzzled. "Alright, how about we stay out of sight as much as possible–"

"You're all overthinking this," Gena cut in from the other side of the car. "Proboscis is a changeling. She's a shitty one, but we _all_ are." That earned her matching glares from Frons and Mandible. "Any changeling, even one like her, needs to be able to act like ponies they've barely even heard of on a whim. And _you_," she pointed at Popper, "seem to know enough about Pinkie Pie to pass as her easily. If you're really a changeling worth calling one, that is."

Gena had no idea how well Party Popper could pretend to be Pinkie Pie if she wanted to. She also didn't know how badly Popper wanted to do literally anything else short of walking up to Twilight Sparkle with a smile and a "hi, I'm a clone".

"Pinkie Pie is supposed to be in Canterlot," Mandible repeated.

Gena seemed unperturbed. "And Canterlot is a short train ride from Ponyville. If anypony asks, she had to go home to fetch something she forgot or whatever."

"Can't I just… hide in a bush or something while we wait for the train?" Popper asked. "I think there's a big one near the station."

Mandible looked skeptical. "Could you sit still for that long?"

"If the alternative is going into Ponyville, I think I can."

Frons gave her an odd look. "You _really_ don't want to go into Ponyville, do you." It wasn't a question.

"I… you don't understand." Popper looked down at the floor of the train car. "If I get caught in Ponyville, I'm _dead_."

"That's a bit dramatic, isn't it?" Labrum commented. "Ponies don't _kill_ the few changelings they catch."

"Ponies are wusses," Gena added. "They wouldn't kill _anypony_, changeling or otherwise."

"We don't either," Clypeus said, finally speaking up.

"We could if we had to."

"Twilight Sparkle would," Popper muttered, half to herself.

Clypeus went wide-eyed, but Gena just laughed. It was a more mocking laugh than what came from Labrum.

"The Princess of Friendship killing somepony?" she asked, disbelief clear in her voice. "That's it, now I've heard everything."

_No,_ Party Popper thought. _No, you really haven't._

* * *

As the train pulled in towards Ponyville, Party Popper saw the town for the first time since her hasty departure. It looked much the same as she remembered it – quaint and cozy and absolutely terrifying. But while her memories were vague and incomplete, she knew that was not to blame for the biggest difference: A large, star-shaped castle at the outskirts of the town, beautifully constructed out of blue crystal.

It was a monument to the rule of the one pony Party Popper feared most. She felt sick to her stomach, looking at the majestic building. Maybe she shouldn't have eaten so many desserts.

The train began to slow.

_You can do this,_ she told herself. _They're all in Canterlot. Even if somepony tells them about you, you'll be long gone._

The train stopped moving entirely.

_You can do this. You are a clone of Pinkie Pie, you can pass as her if you try._

The magic-powered doors of the car opened. The changelings filed out.

_You can do this._ Why did she keep lying to herself?

She hesitated, then stepped out onto the platform behind Clypeus. She was in Ponyville, and her world hadn't ended. Yet.

All around her were unfamiliar faces. The station was small, but busy, with more ponies boarding the train than disembarking. A teal unicorn mare with an interest in fantasy creatures was boarding alongside a candy-maned mare who made Party Popper think of secret agents of all things. A gray pegasus mare with hereditary wall-eyes and a taste for muffins walked through the door behind a brown stallion with a penchant for science.

The mare on that bench over there liked cookies. The stallion next to her couldn't stand them. The yellow unicorn mare stepping onto the train a few cars down held a grudge against helium balloons for some reason. _Who doesn't like helium balloons?!_

Party Popper didn't remember who any of them were, but it seemed Pinkie Pie had known all about them. She had known that Pinkie Pie knew everypony in town, but _feeling_ it firsthoof like this was a whole other thing. She had met ponies Pinkie Pie had known before, but now there were _so many_–

"Are you alright?"

Clypeus' low voice pulled her out of the smallest and most immediate of her ongoing breakdowns. He was the only one of the changelings hanging back with her, the other four having headed down the stairs off the side of the platform.

She started following them, slowly. One step at a time. She could do this.

"Did you mean what you said about Twilight Sparkle? That she would kill somepony?" Clypeus asked when Popper gave no reply to his first question. The grave topic sounded odd coming from his little green earth foal form. A part of Popper wanted to spare him an answer, even though she knew he wasn't actually a foal. Maybe that wasn't the only reason she wanted to spare him the knowledge.

"I don't want to talk about it," she admitted, "but yes, I did. She has."

Clypeus seemed to think that over as they caught up with the rest of the squad. Following the road from the station, everything around them felt familiar in all the worst ways. This was the road she had hurried down in a panic after learning what was happening to all the other clones. As they drew closer to the center of Ponyville, closer to town hall, the feeling of returning horror increased.

"Hiya, Pinkie Pie!" said a little yellow filly with a red bow. In her tunnel of dread, it took Party Popper a moment to realize the filly, a big fan of pancakes, was talking to her.

In fact, there were three of them. An orange pegasus filly was driving a scooter in front, pulling a cart with a white unicorn filly and the earth filly who'd spoken first. They were a tight-knit group, she knew.

"Wait," squeaked the unicorn, "I thought you were in Canterlot with our sisters!"

"And who are _they_?" asked the pegasus, looking at the changelings, who had stopped a little ahead of Popper and the fillies.

Out of the corner of her eye, Popper caught Gena shooting her a meaningful look. A challenging one.

"Heeeeey," Popper said, drawing out the sound unnaturally. It was time to play pretend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The yellow unicorn who holds a grudge against helium balloons is Enterprise, one of the main characters of my other fic, Dreamers and the Moon.
> 
> I recently had Traffic Pattern and (dream copies of) some of the other Manehattan police officers show up in a chapter of Dreamers and the Moon, so I figured it was only fair that the cameo game went both ways. (Though Traffic Pattern got a bit more than just a cameo, really.)
> 
> We will be returning to the comedy side of this fic soon enough, but right now Popper is not exactly in the mood for laughter.


	12. Gift

It had been half a day, and Clypeus still wasn't sure why he was helping a pony pretend to be a changeling.

He looked up at Party Popper from his foal form. She was talking to three fillies who had stopped next to the squad and immediately asked her difficult questions.

She nervously recited the story Gena had come up with, that she had come back to Ponyville to fetch something. The earth pony was all but shaking as she said it, prompting squints both from the unicorn filly on the scooter, and from Gena.

Clypeus doubted that Party Popper had noticed the latter. She was too focused on stuttering out an explanation that the changelings were a family she had befriended on the train from Canterlot.

"Wait," said the pegasus, "didn't the train just come from Manehattan and _leave_ for Canterlot?" At surprised looks from both Party Popper and the other fillies, she added, "What? I wait for my aunts at the station a lot. There's not much there to pass the time, other than memorizing the schedules."

Clypeus' frown deepened ever so slightly. That was going to be hard to explain, and she would need to do it by herself. If any of the changelings stepped in without a carefully thought out answer, it would probably just make things worse.

Then again, so could Party Popper. "N-no," she said, sporting a far too wide grin, "they… they changed the schedule! Today!"

That was a rookie mistake. When you had to lie, it was always best to make the lie difficult to disconfirm. The fillies would only have to visit the station once to find out that the schedule was unchanged, and that was if the shaky delivery didn't tip them off.

Why _was_ Party Popper so out of it when it came to Ponyville and Pinkie Pie? She had said that she would be _killed_ if she were found out in Ponyville, and that Princess Twilight Sparkle of all ponies had killed somepony before. She had sounded so sure, it was almost like she had witnessed it herself.

Could it have something to do with the fact that she looked identical to Pinkie Pie, right down to the balloon cutie mark? That was another mystery, after the "frozen changeling" conclusion Mandible had leaped to had been ruled out.

Assuming it had been. Party Popper _could_ have lied to Clypeus back in the clothing store, but he couldn't think of any reason why she would do that if she were letting the others know she _was_ a frozen changeling, and she really _didn't_ act like any changeling he'd ever met.

Maybe that was why he was helping her – because he wanted to figure her out, to understand her?

She was clearly hiding something from him just as much as from the other changelings. Though she was not very good at hiding things, it seemed – the disaster of a conversation she was having with the three fillies, now having moved on to how preparations for the Festival of Love were going, was driving that point home.

Frons took it upon himself to put an end to it. "Are you coming, Pinkie Pie?" he asked. "You said you'd show us around town, remember?"

Party Popper looked at him, startled. "Pinkie Pie? Who's-- I mean, uh, yes! That! The, uh, grand tour! Sorry, kids, I have to go now. Have FUN!"

Before the fillies could respond, Party Popper zoomed to the front of the squad, not looking back. Clypeus waved awkwardly to the confused fillies as they all followed her, almost having to canter to keep up with the fleeing pony.

* * *

Scootaloo stared after Pinkie Pie as she ran off to give the family she claimed to have befriended on the train the tour of Ponyville. One of the three foals waved before cantering after Pinkie.

"Well, _that_ was strange," Sweetie Belle said.

"Yeah!" Apple Bloom agreed. "And not just Pinkie – y'all saw that family she was with, right? Three foals and two stallions, no ma!"

"That's not so weird," Scootaloo said. "One of them could be an uncle or something."

"Ah don't think so. Ah _know_ uncles," Apple Bloom assured her. What was that even supposed to mean?

"Maybe they're gay?" Sweetie Belle suggested.

"Maybe they're what now?" Apple Bloom asked, looking confused.

Scootaloo kicked the scooter into action. They could explain on their way to the train station. It wasn't where they had originally been headed, but Scootaloo had a train schedule to check.

* * *

When Clypeus and the rest of the squad finally caught up to Party Popper, they found her sitting on the ground on the far side of a bridge, facing a large, round building that could only be Ponyville's town hall.

She didn't say anything as the squad stopped next to her.

Frons looked around to make sure all the ponies were out of earshot. He still picked his words carefully. "Alright, everypony, if we have to wait here anyway, we should take this time to feed and get supplies."

By "get supplies", he meant they should store up excess love to share with the hive. That reminded Clypeus of something else, though.

Frons continued in even more hushed tones, "Let's split up, two and two, and meet here in an hour. But keep your forms unless you're forced to shift, act like tourists, and only drain ambiently. We don't need to take risks here."

"I'll go with Proboscis," Clypeus said.

Party Popper, back still turned towards most of the squad, didn't react. Clypeus frowned.

"Great. You should probably take on an adult form, when you can, so nopony starts wondering why Pinkie Pie is trotting around with somepony's foal. Mandible and Labrum, you go together. Gena, you're with me."

Everypony except Frons and Party Popper nodded, and soon two stallions went off in different directions with a foal each by their side.

Party Popper still sat there, staring at the town hall.

Clypeus walked up to her. He stopped himself from asking, again, if she was alright – he could plainly see that she wasn't. Tears were pooling in her eyes. What did ponies do in situations like this? What could _he_ do? He kept quiet and did the only thing he could think of.

He couldn't understand, but he could give. So he sat down next to her and gave her his company as she began to sob.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A reminder on the changelings' forms: When they boarded the train in chapter 10, Gena, Clypeus and Labrum had to shift into foals because three of the stolen tickets were foals' tickets. Frons and Mandible stayed in adult stallion forms, the idea being that bystanders would assume Party Popper was the mom in the family.
> 
> Ambient feeding is far less effective than direct feeding (where the changeling replaces the target of the affection), but only requires proximity to love.


	13. In the Bushes

"There she is," whispered a small bush named Scootaloo. "I knew she'd go to Sugarcube Corner!"

"Well, yeah," Sweetie Belle said behind her, "she said she came back to Ponyville to fetch something, remember? It would probably be here or at the castle."

She wasn't being loud, but she also wasn't bothering to act like part of the bush. Still, she stayed out of Pinkie Pie's sight, which Scootaloo supposed would have to be good enough. Her friends didn't have to play along as long as they didn't blow their cover.

"Come on, Sweetie Belle," Scootaloo said, giving her friend a stern look, "you still believe that? She lied to us about the train schedules, and she couldn't have just arrived from Canterlot. Who knows what else she was lying about?"

"I guess you're right," Sweetie Belle admitted, "but why does that mean we have to hide in the bushes?"

"You two aren't even in here," Scootaloo pointed out, sparing a glance for Apple Bloom, who still sat in the scooter cart looking lost in thought. "And _I'm_ hiding in the bushes because we have to figure out what's going on, duh."

"It's probably just Pinkie Pie being Pinkie Pie."

"Has Pinkie Pie ever _lied_ to us before? Like, besides saying her cutie mark story was how Equestria was made."

"I… uhm…" Sweetie Belle seemed at a loss for words.

Scootaloo turned back to her target. "And if she's here to fetch something, why is she sitting _outside_ Sugarcube Corner?" Pinkie Pie was still sitting alone in a spot off to the side from the entrance, with her back to the bakery's wall. Everything about her looked stiff, but she was always moving in little ways. A twitching hoof here, a shift in position there, as though sitting still was the last thing she wanted to do. That was typical of Pinkie Pie, but there was no trace of her characteristic smile on her face.

"If mares can be in love with mares," Apple Bloom said suddenly, perking up from her deep thoughts, "does that mean… Lyra and Bon Bon…?"

Sweetie Belle seemed thankful for the excuse to talk about something else. "Oh yes, definitely Lyra and Bon Bon," she said knowingly. Scootaloo wasn't as sure about what was going on between those two mares, but she also didn't care. She rolled her eyes, letting her friends go on about gay ponies while she returned to watching Pinkie Pie from her vantage point in the bush.

Soon, the door to Sugarcube Corner opened, letting out a gray-coated unicorn she was sure she had never seen before, followed by a large bag of pastries being levitated in his orange magic. Scootaloo didn't think much of him – she knew she would never recognize everypony in Ponyville like Pinkie Pie did – until he trotted over to the pink pony and put the bag down between them. How many strangers had she met on that train?

"Thank you," Pinkie Pie said glumly, taking a pair of chocolate donuts from the bag and hoofing one to the stallion. He looked at it as though unsure what to do with it, while Pinkie picked up the rest of the bag and stuck it inside her mane.

Scootaloo stared. How did she _do_ that? The bag was several times bigger than her head!

Pinkie took a bite of her donut, then looked at the stallion, who was still staring at his own. She gave him a small, slanted smile that only looked a little forced. "You do know what to do with that, don't you?"

"We, um, don't really eat," the stallion said in a low enough voice that Scootaloo could barely make it out. She rubbed her ear with a hoof, thinking she hadn't heard that right, but he continued, "I mean, we can, but it usually doesn't taste like much."

Still, he took a bite, and his face lit up. "Woah... This tastes like love." Somehow, he still managed to sound sullen.

"Of course it does, it's chocolate!" Pinkie Pie said, suddenly beaming. Her smile faded as quickly as it had appeared, though, leaving only an uncomfortable silence.

Well, apart from the voices of Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle behind Scootaloo. They were still chatting, but it seemed they were being quiet enough about it to not rouse Pinkie Pie's suspicions, probably blending in with the ambient noises of Ponyville if Pinkie Pie could hear them at all. She tuned them out again as the stallion broke the silence.

"Do you… want to talk about what happened back there? At town hall?"

Even as stiff as Pinkie Pie had already been, she still managed to tense further. She stayed silent for a long while before answering shakily, "I… s-something terrible happened there once, Clypeus."

That was a very strange name. Scootaloo tried it out on her tongue, whispering to avoid drawing attention. "Clypeus…?"

Clypeus said nothing, but gave Pinkie Pie a look that Scootaloo took to mean "go on".

"Remember what I said about Princess Twilight?" Pinkie Pie asked. Since when did she use Twilight's title? "It was me. Well, other mes."

"What?" Clypeus and Scootaloo said at the same time. Ear twitching, Clypeus turned his head towards the bush, but then he shook it and looked back at Pinkie Pie.

"I'm n-not a normal pony, Clyppy."

Scootaloo was more surprised by the nickname than the confession. It had always been clear that Pinkie Pie was anything but normal.

"I'm not even Party Popper. I'm… Pinkie Pie m-made me. I'm a clone."

Scootaloo fell backwards out of the bush, getting a look from Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom. "_This is big_," she told them, then got up and crawled back in as quickly as she could without making too much noise.

"–way too much sense…" she heard Clypeus say in a low voice. On either side of her, Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom crawled into the bush.

"W-when Twilight f-found out Pinkie had made a lot of us," the clone of Pinkie Pie continued, "she r-rounded up all the clones she could find in the t-town hall s-so she could… c-could–"

Clypeus awkwardly put a hoof on her back as she broke down sobbing. "It's… it's okay? Um. No wonder you didn't want to stop here."

"Ah remember that," Apple Bloom whispered, "them Pinkie clones ruined our barn."

"And Rarity's shop," Sweetie Belle squeaked.

"And Rainbow Dash's nap!" Scootaloo said. When Apple Bloom looked at her with a raised eyebrow, she added, "What? Naps are important if you want to be as cool as Rainbow Dash."

"Look at her, though," Sweetie Belle said. "She can't be all bad, can she?"

"Ah s'pose the other clones might'a been like her family," Apple Bloom said.

"And then Twilight… and _Rainbow Dash_…" Scootaloo covered her mouth with her hooves.

Clypeus looked in the direction of the Ponyville clock tower. "Look, Popper, the hour is almost up. How about we go meet up with the rest of the squad so we can get out of this town?" He would have sounded almost jovial if he hadn't sounded so sad. "If you still want to come with us to the hive."

"What other place is there any point in me going?" the clone – Party Popper? – asked. "I might as well go with you all and not be alone on the way."

Clypeus actually smiled at that. Then he looked around, as though making sure nopony could see them.

It happened in a flash of green fire. One moment, Clypeus was a gray unicorn stallion. The next, he was one of the foals they had met with Pinkie Pie earlier. The three Crusaders shared shocked glances inside the bush. In that moment, Scootaloo was sure they all knew what this meant.

A leftover clone of Pinkie Pie was traveling with a group of changelings, and they could never tell their sisters or Princess Twilight Sparkle.

* * *

When the changeling, the clone and the fillies were all finally out of sight, the bush caught fire. Green fire. An instant later, an earth pony stood in its place, her coat a vibrant contrast to the dark green leaves she had been covered with a moment before.

The pony adjusted her mane with a shiver. The fillies climbing into her had been unexpected and not very comfortable, but when you were spying, you had to endure whatever happened. Blowing your cover just because something was uncomfortable wouldn't do.

She pulled her hoof out of the hole that had, moments ago, held her roots, and began heading towards her cottage, where she would find the privacy to cast a communication spell.

Valvula had just learned something interesting, and the Queen would want to know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Influences: Chocolate tasting like love comes from Daughter of Discord by Disneyfanatic2364.
> 
> For anyone who might not remember: Valvula was first mentioned in chapter 3, as a then-one-off gag in Labrum's narration. Labrum described her as having been bullied out of the hive for her name.
> 
> But as these things go, my one-off gags don't tend to stay one-off, so she gets to be a little relevant here.


	14. Hearing the Buzz

Far out in the wilderness ponies called the Undiscovered West, a few hours' journey by hoof from the nearest train station, a rocky structure sat in the middle of a ring of desolation. The tall and pointy hive of scum and villainy would strike fear into the heart of any non-changeling who ventured far enough to see it, and sap the strength out of those brave or foolish enough to come closer.

To Rhabdom, Grand Spymaster of the Compound Eye, it was home.

It was a home he would serve and protect at all costs. If having to listen to bumbling maggots all day was what it took to serve the hive's best interests, he was prepared to listen until his ears bled. Which was fortunate, seeing as he was doing just that.

"...and I overheard my neighbor, miss Quartz, say she forgot to let her pet cat out last night," said the changeling whose visage was being projected in front of Rhabdom's face through the communication spell all the dedicated spies had been taught. With a flash of green flame, it was replaced by the face of an aging pink crystal mare with ringlets in her mane. "Lion gets very temperamental if he doesn't get to go out when he wants to, and—"

"Spiracle," Rhabdom said with a sigh, "how is any of this relevant to the Queen?"

"I'unno," Spiracle replied, returning to his true form. "You told me it wasn't my job to think about what the Queen did or didn't need to hear, sir, last week when I forgot to tell you the Princess was out of the Empire."

Buzz. He was right, Rhabdom _had_ said that.

"Right… We probably don't need to hear about miss Quartz's cat, though, understood?"

"Sir, yes, sir!" Spiracle made an exaggerated salute. Coming from anypony else, Rhabdom would have thought it mocking, but he knew it was entirely in earnest.

"Do you have anything else to report from the Crystal Empire?"

"Yes, sir. With Princess Cadence, Prince Shining Armor and their daughter all out of the Empire for the Festival of Love in Canterlot, a group of nobles from Equestria have been assigned to temporarily take over ruling the Crystal Empire in their absence. First among them is somepony named Blueblood."

Rhabdom had heard much about Prince Blueblood from his Canterlot spies. More than likely, only Blueblood and Spiracle thought he was first among the nobles. "Is she _trying_ to tear apart the Empire?" Rhabdom wondered aloud as he wrote down the information on his notepad.

Spiracle seemed to think it a question meant for him. "He's a stallion, sir."

"I know. Anything else?"

"Well, Obsidian Shard's dogs—"

"I don't want to hear about any more pets!" Rhabdom snapped.

"But—"

"No 'but's! Was that all?"

"Um…" Spiracle sounded taken aback. Good. "Yes, sir, that was all."

"Excellent. Thank you for your report, Spiracle. Keep a close eye on Prince Blueblood and the circle of nobles that he thinks is his. Understood?"

"Understood, sir. Spiracle, over and out."

The moment Spiracle's face disappeared, Rhabdom let out a deep sigh of relief, before mentally checking his own end of the communication spell. Dealing with Spiracle's nonsense had taken so long, there was already another changeling waiting for him to pick up the call.

The communication spell was highly versatile and valuable. It wasn't the easiest to cast, but Rhabdom still didn't understand why the Queen insisted on only teaching it to the spies of the Compound Eye. Every changeling could have use out of it, if she let them.

Part of its versatility lay in the amount of control the recipient had in their own mind. At will, Rhabdom could check who was attempting to contact him, "pick up" or decline calls, or even give an automated response that would record a one-sided message from the changeling on the other end, a feature the Queen had referred to as "voicemail".

So by the time he saw the face of her pony form projected in front of him, Rhabdom already knew it would be Valvula. While many changelings would dismiss or belittle her for her awful name – seriously, who would name their daughter _Valvula_ – the mare was a highly competent spy who just so happened to have already been positioned in Ponyville before Twilight Sparkle moved there and formed her little Council of Friendship. After the disastrous wedding invasion and especially since Twilight's later coronation, Valvula had been a valuable source of information on what the fourth princess of Equestria was up to.

"Valvula, reporting from Ponyville," she said curtly. She was always curt, these days. "The squad Clypeus is on is passing through Ponyville on their way to the hive."

That would be squad 833, led by Frons. They had reportedly caused an uproar in Manehattan that morning, seemingly having had to break one of their own out of the local police station's holding cells. If they were in Ponyville already, they must have taken the train.

"Excellent," Rhabdom said, writing the intel down.

"They're bringing a clone of Pinkie Pie."

"What?"

"A few weeks after the Crystal Empire returned, Pinkie Pie duplicated herself. I don't know how. In the end, Twilight locked about forty Pinkies in a room and lasered them until only the real one was left. I guess one slipped away." Valvula's blunt, matter-of-fact tone as she recounted the tale only served to underline how shocking it was.

"Why didn't you report that at the time?" Rhabdom asked.

Valvula shrugged, a motion that was barely visible on the projection. "It didn't seem relevant."

"That's for me and the Queen to decide," Rhabdom chided. "Do you know _why_ squad 833 is bringing this… clone?"

"I don't, but I think only Clypeus knows what she is. I watched her tell him. The Council's sisters know, too." For some reason, Valvula shivered at the thought of that, but she quickly pulled herself together.

"Interesting. Anything else?"

"She calls herself Party Popper."

Valvula went on to give Rhabdom a short update on other matters in Ponyville. Not much else of note had changed there, other than some ponies traveling to Canterlot a few days in advance to attend the Festival of Love, so Rhabdom was thankful for her characteristic brevity.

It even left him some time to think and organize his notes before the next call came in from… O͘m̡̡͘͜m̸̶͠a̕͢ţ͜o̶̕p̧͟h̷͡o̶͘͢͜r͏̸̵̧e̴̡͞? What? Rhabdom could barely make out the name of one of the Canterlot spies, under the static that filled his brain when he tried to check the caller ID.

Unsettled, he picked up the call. Ommatophore's face was projected in the air in front of him, but it was _wrong_, appearing heavily distorted. From what little Rhabdom could make out, Ommatophore was just as taken aback as he was.

Then he spoke. At least, Rhabdom assumed that was what caused the awful screeching sound.

"Ah!" Rhabdom exclaimed, putting his hooves to his ears. It barely helped, but it made Ommatophore stop talking, and the screeching faded.

Rhabdom closed the call. He was about to cast the spell himself, to try contacting Ommatophore in return, when a hive messenger entered the communication room.

"Rhabdom," Tarsus said plainly, not bothering to verify that he was actually talking to Rhabdom. "The Queen wishes to see you. Just so you know, she's in a foul mood."

Rhabdom could feel Ommatophore trying to call him again, but he had more immediate matters to attend to now. He let it go to "voicemail" and hoped he wouldn't be greeted by more distorted screeching when he checked the message.

It was time to pass on what he had learned.

* * *

Sometimes, Rhabdom wished the Queen would use the communication spell for his debriefing sessions. It would spare him the walk to the throne room, and allow him to keep his notes in one place.

But no, she insisted on having him come to the throne room and give her the information from the spies face to face. Well, face to _real_ face.

As he entered the throne room, he found Queen Chrysalis pacing on the floor below her throne. She noticed his presence a moment too late for him to miss that she was muttering to herself, though he could not make out the words.

"Spymaster Rhabdom," she greeted as she flew up to sit on her throne, acting as though nothing had happened, though her tone gave her frustration away. Rhabdom didn't dare nor care to challenge her on that. "What news is there from Equestria?"

Having only had a short time to organize his notes, Rhabdom started from the top, giving the Queen the most important notes on each piece of news, mostly in the same order he had received the calls.

Perhaps that had been a mistake. As report after report of little substance came in, barely noteworthy enough for Rhabdom to bring them to her, the Queen only grew more and more irritated.

"Spiracle reports that a circle of nobles have temporarily taken charge of the Crystal Empire in Cadence and Shining Armor's absence, ostensibly led by Blueblood," Rhabdom reported. It may or may not be a useful detail, but he had hoped that the idea of Prince Blueblood being in charge of anything might lighten the Queen's mood.

Unfortunately, she only grumbled at his pause.

"Reports from Chaeta in Manehattan and Valvula in Ponyville indicate that squad 833 is on its way back after running into some trouble in Manehattan. Valvula reports that they are bringing—"

"ENOUGH!" Chrysalis shouted. In a lower voice, more growl than speech, she continued, "No more irrelevant drivel. Give me the news from Canterlot."

"But Your Highness, Valvula's report—"

"_I. Don't. Care._" she snarled, flashing her sharp teeth. "Valvula and squad 833 aren't important. _Canterlot_, Rhabdom."

"As you wish, Your Highness," Rhabdom conceded with a small bow. Pushing one's luck by questioning the Queen's orders more than once was risky, especially when she was in this sort of mood.

He skipped a few lines in his notes and continued, "Morning reports from spies near the castle indicate a series of so-called Sonic Rainbooms periodically supercharging unicorn magic in the city. Apparently Rainbow Dash has been practicing. Celestia and Luna have been busy handling the usual politics while Cadence, Twilight Sparkle and the Council of Friendship have been preparing for the Festival."

"As expected. What about Shining Armor?"

"He has been sighted with his sister, alongside a master artificer named Focus Flare and an earth pony stallion the spies could not identify. What they're up to is unknown."

"You said these were morning reports. Have there been any more recent ones?"

Rhabdom hesitated. "Ommatophore attempted to report just before I received your summons, Your Highness, but something went wrong with the spell."

"Wrong? Wrong how?"

He mentally checked the voicemail. Sure enough, there were two messages from "O̡͠͝͡m̶̴m̡͠͝͝͠a̵̢̛͡t̶̢̛o̵̡͟p̴̧͘h̷͟͝o͡͏̢̕r̵̸e̡͝", and one from "E̴̷̕l̴̶̕y̧̨̛͟͢t̸̢r͘̕͠o̵͢n̶͏̷͡", his partner. He played the first one, right there in front of the Queen. A distorted Ommatophore appeared, screeching every time he opened his mouth.

"Like that, Your Highness," Rhabdom said as he stopped the infernal racket after a few seconds.

Queen Chrysalis growled again. "So you have nothing of use."

"I—"

"Get out," she said flatly. "Return to me when you have something worthwhile from Canterlot."

"Your Highness…"

"GET OUT!"

Rhabdom was not one to lose control of himself to the point of scrambling for the exit that was opening in the wall. Nonetheless, anypony who saw him leave the throne room that afternoon would describe him as scurrying.

Nopony hesitated to obey the Queen twice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It seems somepony woke up on the wrong side of the cocoon.
> 
> On the new changeling names:
> 
> \- A rhabdom is the transparent tube at the core of each ommatidium in a compound eye, guiding the light down to the photoreceptors.  
\- A spiracle is an opening that insects use to breathe through. (Thus, he's an airhead.)  
\- An ommatophore is another word for an eyestalk.  
\- A tarsus is the bottom segment of an insect's leg.  
\- A chaeta is a chitinous bristle, sometimes used by worms to move around.  
\- Elytra (singular elytron) are hardened forewings that some bugs use to cover their flight wings while not in the air. They are also one of the best additions to Minecraft ever.
> 
> Miss (Rose) Quartz and her pet cat Lion are a blatant Steven Universe reference, because of course I couldn't resist making one when I decided to address the status of the Crystal Empire.


	15. On the Edge

Having been cooped up in one city for most of her life, Party Popper had never quite appreciated just how FUN trotting through the woods could be.

Bouncing along between the densely packed trees of the Undiscovered West, she could feel laughter coming back to her after too many mirthless hours on the train from Ponyville to a small railroad junction north of Las Pegasus. Stepping into the seemingly endless forest, she had finally put Ponyville behind her and turned her gaze forward, into the unknown. This was what being on an adventure was all about, she decided, and it was FUN.

Unfortunately, she seemed to be the only one who thought so.

"I don't see what's so funny," Mandible grumbled when Popper let some of her laughter out. He was pushing through branches ahead of the squad, alongside Frons, but where Frons kept holding the branches out of the others' path until they had passed, Mandible let the branches swing back with no care for who had to duck. They had started out in two files, but by now only Labrum was walking directly behind Mandible.

"I saw a tree that looked like a bird!" Popper said, pointing to a stout tree with fungi growing on the side of the trunk. In truth, it was a stretch, but the mushrooms really reminded her of a beak.

Mandible squinted irritably at the tree, then kept pushing through the forest. "I don't see it."

"Me neither," said Gena, though Popper could have sworn the airborne changeling was squinting at _her_, not the FUNny tree. "Must be your imagination."

"It's good to have a strong imagination," Frons said. "It helps you think of what to say when ponies might be getting suspicious of you."

"Yeah, if you use it properly," Gena retorted, "instead of telling them railroad schedules have suddenly changed."

"I panicked, okay?" Popper pleaded. Gena had refused to let up on that since they left Ponyville.

"No," Mandible said, "that's _not_ okay. Good changeling agents never panic or act rashly."

"You're one to talk," Labrum said. His chuckle was cut short as he had to dodge a particularly quick-swinging branch.

In the very back of the group, Clypeus stopped, looking back at the stout tree for a few moments. "...heh," he finally said as he turned back towards the group. He didn't smile, but he didn't frown either.

It was a small sound, but it made Party Popper grin. She would teach him to laugh yet.

* * *

Party Popper had never quite appreciated just how FUN trotting through the woods could be.

…for a while.

"Are we there yet?" she asked, shifting on her sore hooves.

"**No!**" Mandible snapped, rounding on her. He had only gotten more and more irritable as the squad traveled through the increasingly dense woods. Sore hooves or not, Party Popper couldn't understand why.

"Actually—" Frons started saying, but Mandible cut him off.

"_No_, we are _not_ there yet! Just like we weren't there yet the last fifty buzzing times you asked, and probably won't be there the next fifty either!"

"Mandible—"

"And I'm sick and tired of _you_ and your incessant _bouncing_ and _babbling_ about trees with beaks and _foals_ and _baking_ and… and whatever those other things you mentioned were!"

"Mandible."

"I can't take any more of these _buzzing_ woods and their _buzzing_ branches and… and _you!_" he pointed accusingly at Gena, "Frons gets us all to stay low because Proboscis can't _buzzing_ fly but _you_ just can't keep your hooves on the ground for five seconds, can you!"

Gena simply shrugged in the air as Mandible turned on Frons. "And _you_—"

"MANDIBLE!" Frons cut him off. His voice was loud and firm, but somehow it still didn't feel like a shout. Pushing a branch to the side and revealing a ray of light, he calmly added, "We're there."

"...oh," Mandible said, his rant stopped dead in its tracks.

Following Frons and a quieted Mandible, Party Popper bounced past the last few branches. The forest abruptly opened up onto a small ledge overhanging the border of a large wasteland where nothing, not even grass, seemed to grow. The remains of a few dead trees were the only vegetation ahead.

Right in the middle of the wasteland, close enough to bring hope for sore hooves but far enough that the thought of walking even that far made her hooves ache preemptively, towered what she could only assume was the changeling hive. The tall, pointy structure was a lot more menacing than she had expected, even at such a distance.

It looked like the home of villains.

"Hive, sweet hive," Labrum said, gliding off the ledge on his insectoid wings. "You coming?"

Jolted from her thoughts of the hive, Party Popper looked around herself and realized she and Clypeus were the only ones left on the ledge. Frons, Gena and Mandible were already well ahead of them.

"It's not as high as it looks," Clypeus said, taking flight and hovering next to her. "Just drop down and you'll be okay, I promise." He gently flew down to the ground below, where Labrum was waiting.

With a hop, skip and a gentle drop, Party Popper entered the changeling wasteland. A chill went through her body, leaving her with a sense of… what was that? Hunger? No. She wouldn't need to eat for another good while, she thought. So why did she suddenly feel like much of the strength in her body was gone? Was this what lethargy felt like?

Somehow, it made her feel more anchored, more real. She wasn't sure she liked it.

Still, she had come this far. There was no reason not to power through. When she had first started on her journey, it had just been because of her willingness to go along with things, but somewhere along the way, something had changed. Now, she had found she was actively looking forward to seeing what her new friends' home was like. That would be FUN… right?

_Right?_

And so, as she followed the changelings across the wasteland surrounding the changeling hive, trotting rather than bouncing, Party Popper hoped she hadn't made a huge mistake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not one of my best chapters, perhaps, but I needed to get this out for the sake of breaking out of my months-long writing funk. I've had an increasing number of unfinished WIP chapters since shortly before the show ended and it's been driving me crazy that my fics stagnated like that.
> 
> With this transitional chapter finished, I hope to be able to start putting out chapters more regularly again.


End file.
